Judith and Holofernes

Some decades after the “Abraham and Isaac”, between 1455 and 1460, Donatello created this group. The outward resemblance of the figural motif is pointed out only to bring into even greater relief the ever new freedom of stylistic invention of the artist, in the most absolute consistency of poetic procedure. Taking due account of the great chronological distance between the two works, placed almost at the two extremes of Donatello's career, and of the fact that the group carved for the Campanile was intended for a niche, whereas this one was destined to stand in open space, one will nevertheless notice in both the same impatience with canonical compositional schemes, the same incredible and almost disconcerting formal solution of the theme, realistically created solely in function of its moral and psychological meaning. No Renaissance artist would have this freedom and this courage towards form and reality, which are already entirely “modern”.