dicts the construction standards of the High Renaissance.Donatello was not doing much work the last three years at Padua, the work for the St. Antonio altar was unpaid for and the Gattamelata monument not placed until 1453. Offers of other places reached him from Mantua, Modena, Ferrara, and even Naples, but nothing came of them. He was clearly passing through a crisis that prevented him from working. He was later quoted as saying that he almost died among those frogs in Padua. In 1456 the Florentine physician Giovanni Chellini noted he had successfully treated the master for a protracted illness. Donatello only completed two works between 1450 and 1455, the wooden statue St. John the Baptist and a figure of Mary Magdalen. Both works show new reality, Donatellos formerly powerful bodies have become withered and spidery. When the Magdalen was damaged in the 1966 flood at Florence, restoration work revealed the original painted surface, including realistic flesh tones and golden highlights throughout the saints hair. During his absence, a new generation of sculptors who excelled in the treatment of marble surfaces had rose in Florence. With the change in Florentine taste, all of Donatellos important requests came from outside Florence. They included the bronze group Judith and Holofernes which is now standing before the Palazzo Vecchio and a bronze statue of St. John the Baptist for Siena cathedral, also undertook the work of the pair of bronze doors in the late 1450s. This project, which might have rivalled Ghibertis doors for the Florentine baptistery, was abandoned about 1460 for unknown reasons.The last years of Donatellos life were spent designing twin bronze pulpits for St. Lorenzo, and again in the service of his old patrons the Medici, he died on December 13, 1466. These twin bronze pulpits covered with reliefs showing the passion of Christ, are works of tremendous spiritual depth and complexity. Even though some part...
