Donatello

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, known as Donatello (c. 1386–1466), was a Florentine sculptor who helped create the Early Renaissance style. The son of a wool-stretcher, he studied ancient remains in Rome with Filippo Brunelleschi after 1402, and from 1404 worked in Ghiberti's workshop on the Baptistery doors, carving prophets and saints for the cathedral and Orsanmichele.

His bronze David, about 1440, probably made for Cosimo de' Medici, was the first free-standing nude male statue since antiquity. In 1443 he left for Padua and stayed ten years; his equestrian monument of the condottiere Gattamelata, completed in 1453, became the model for later monuments.

All accounts call him amiable but careless about money: he is said to have hung a basket of coins from his workshop ceiling for his assistants to take from. He died in Florence in 1466 and was buried in San Lorenzo near Cosimo de' Medici.