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Donato (Donatello is a diminutive form, just as Kenny is for Kenneth) di Niccolò di Betto Bardi was born in Florence about 1386. He probably learned stone carving from one of the sculptors working on the Florence cathedral in about 1400. Between 1404 and 1407 he ....

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.... "flattened out." The carving was extremely shallow with details executed to catch the light in a pictorial manner rather than deeply carved figures against relatively plain backgrounds. Donatello also worked in bronze, beginning in about 1423. The most important bronze works were 'David', the first large-scale, free-standing nude statue of the Renaissance; 'Gattamelata' in Padua, the first bronze equestrian, or man-mounted-on-horse, statue to commemorate a non-ruler and the model for all subsequent equestrian monuments; and twin bronze pulpits for the Medici church of San Lorenzo in Florence, just before his death there on Dec. 13, 1466. In ....