Abraham and Isaac

The need to enclose two linked figures in a complex movement within the narrow space of a niche gave Donatello the opportunity to express his absolute and natural freedom of composition and of sculptural language. This group, carved in 1421 for the Campanile in collaboration with Nanni di Bartolo, known as il Rosso, fuses within the extraordinary immediacy of a dynamic nucleus subtle and divergent sculptural solutions, from analytical and descriptive rendering to the optical effects of stiacciato. From the dense whirl of Abraham's drapery emerges the polished nude of Isaac, which takes up the pose of Brunelleschi's figure for the Baptistery competition, in a contrast between a luministic background and a crisp volume in the foreground; it is a brilliant solution for achieving an immediate effect of depth. But note also the contrast between the realism of the father's hands and the abstract, classicising purity of the boy's profile, attributable not so much to il Rosso's execution as to Donatello's intention of emphasising the cultural borrowing.