When Michelangelo signed the contract with the Opera del Duomo in Florence in August 1501 for the execution of the marble statue of a David, he was 26 years old, and had already executed a series of works, which later became “classics”; including in Rome, in the very last years of the 15th century, the Bacchus (now in the Bargello) and the Pietà in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, the only work he signed on the oblique waist on the chest of the Madonna “Michelangelus Bonarotus Florentinus Faciebat”.

The contract for the David read …ad faciendum et perficiendum et perfece finendumquendam hominem, vocatur gigantem, abozatum, rachiorum novem ex marmore, existtentem in dicta opera, olim abozatum per magistrum Agostinum… de florentia et male abozatum…
That is, Michelangelo should have perfectly sculpted and completed a man defined as giant with a sketched marble existing in the Opera del Duomo, poorly sketched in the past by the Florentine master Agostino.
He began the work as required by a note in the contract:

Incepit dictus Michelangelus laborare et sculpire dicrum gigantem die 13 settembris 1501 ed die lunede mane, quamquam prius videlicet die 9 eiusden uno vel duobus ictibus scarpelli substulisset quoddam nisum quem habebat in pectore: seu dicta die incepit firmiter et fortier laborare, dicta die 13 et die lune summo mane…
That is, the aforementioned Michelangelo had begun to sculpt the said giant on the morning of September 13, 1501 although on the 9th he had removed a “knot” of marble from his chest with one or two strokes of the chisel: but he began to work on it steadily and more strongly on the said day Monday 13 in the morning.

With a few strokes of the chisel, Michelangelo had wanted to ascertain the quality and condition of the rough-hewn block of marble, which had remained outdoors for a long time having been entrusted to Agostino di Duccio years earlier, in 1463.
From a document of the Opera del Duomo dated 18 August 1464 (Poggi, Il Duomo di Firenze 1909)
it appears that it was the draft of a gigantic Prophet to be placed on one of the spurs of the Cathedral.
Agostino di Duccio left the sculpture sketchy, and therefore on 6 May 1476 the marble was given by the Opera del Duomo to Antonio Rossellino to be finished, but he too left it in a sketchy state.

Vasari, however, gives us other news:
“This was marble, nine arm lengths, in which by bad luck Simone da Fiesole had begun a giant, and the work was so badly tanned that it had pierced him between his legs and made everything badly managed and crippled; so that the workmen of Santa Maria del Fiore, who were working on this thing, without bothering to finish it, had abandoned it, and it had been like this for many years and was nevertheless about to wait.”

So Simone Ferrucci da Fiesole was the sculptor who left the badly rough-hewn block of marble

And it was not the Opera del Duomo that commissioned Michelangelo to sculpt and finish the block of marble, but it was Michelangelo himself who asked to be able to work it to try to get something out of it. He was thinking of the greatest sculpture performed in the Renaissance.

In any case, Michelangelo’s sculpture was constrained by the previous “sbozzo” and he was probably not yet sure how to reuse the block, what shape and movement it could give to his work. Which, moreover, had not yet been fully defined, in fact the contract mentions a hominem, vocatur gigantem, originally a Prophet to be placed outdoors on the spurs of the Cathedral.
The marble was in the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo, and there Michelangelo was to sculpt it. He had a turata built between walls and planks (Vasari, Vite) so that no one would see him at work, or see what and how he was creating.

It took Buonarroti three years and three months to complete the work. Probably, as he often did, he divided the time between the colossal giant and other sculptures that he had agreed to execute.
At the end of January 1504 the statue, the majestic David, was finished. Giorgio Vasari wrote that “he has taken the cry out of all the modern and ancient or Greek or Latin statues that they were… and certainly whoever sees this one should not bother to see other sculptures made in our times or in others by any creator.”

There was no more talk of hoisting it on a spur of the cathedral. However, it was necessary to decide where to place it. On 25 January 1504 a special commission was appointed, which was attended by the most famous and important artists of the city: Andrea della Robbia, Cosimo Rosselli, Francesco Granacci, Piero di Cosimo, Davide Ghirlandaio, Simione del Pollaiolo, Filippino Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, Antonio and Giuliano da Sangallo, Andrea Sansovino, Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci and Giuliano da Sangallo proposed placing the monument in Piazza Signoria under the Loggia dei Lanzi, in order to protect it from bad weather, leaning against the wall “with a black niche behind it like a cappelluzza”. In fact, they had noticed that there were “imperfections in the marble” which could have created problems with the duration and static nature of the outdoor sculpture.
The Herald of the Signoria of the Republic and Michelangelo instead proposed to place it either in the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria, or outside to the side of the Palazzo door, in any case outdoors.
Frictions arose so much that, Luca Landucci tells us in his Diary, it was necessary to mount guard at night at the David because it was stoned by those who did not agree on its positioning.
But only the rough draft wall of the Palace could be the background of the great marble, and it was decided to place it where it is still located in copy, but to do this they were forced on June 8, 1504 to move the bronze sculpture of Donatello, cast with lost wax method, Judith killing Holofernes, which was housed in the Loggia dei Lanzi, and on 11 June the red and white marble base was commissioned from Simone del Pollaiolo and Antonio da Sangallo.
Unfortunately, in 1842, in order to be able to move the David from the Arengario on the facade of Palazzo Vecchio, it was only possible to destroy the original base, on which the inscription EXEMPLUM SALUTIS PUBLICAE CIVES POSVERE was engraved, then reconstructing the base equal to the original.

In July and August Michelangelo continued with the sculptural retouching of his masterpiece.
Vasari tells us the witty anecdote that took place in these two months:

“At this moment he was born when, seeing him on Pier Soderini, who pleased him very much, and while he was retouching him in certain places, he said to Michelagnolo that he thought that the nose of that figure was large. Michelagnolo realizing that the gonfalonieri was under the giant, and that his eyesight did not allow him to see the truth, to satisfy him, he climbed onto the bridge which was beside him behind him; and Michelagnolo quickly took a chisel in his left hand with a little marble dust that was on the planks of the bridge, and began to throw lightly with the chisels, he let the dust fall little by little, nor did he touch his nose which was. Then looking down at the gonfalonieri, whom he was watching, he said: Look at him now. I like it better (said the Gonfalonieri): you gave it life. Thus descended Michelagnolo, who laughed at himself, having pity on those who, for the sake of understanding each other, do not know what they are saying.”

The transport of the giant from the Opera del Duomo to the facade of Palazzo Vecchio was another “feat” of no small importance, Vasari also summarizes this for us:

“…Because Giuliano da Sangallo and his brother made a very strong wooden castle, and they suspended that figure with the ropes from it, so that when it shook it would not break off, on the contrary it would always collapse; and with the beams on the flat ground with winches they pulled it, and put it to work. He made a noose to the rope, which held the figure suspended, very easily to slide, and tightened when the weight aggravated it: which is a beautiful and ingenious thing, which I have drawn by his hand in our book, which is admirable, sure, and strong to bind weights”

We had to wait until 8 September to have the David on its base permanently placed next to the door of the Palazzo Vecchio.

In 1512, the base of the David was struck by lightning, but there was no obvious damage to the place. Instead, the statue suffered major damage on 26 April 1527 during the revolt for the expulsion of the Medici from Florence: republicans barricaded themselves in Palazzo Vecchio by throwing stones, furniture and tiles from the windows which, striking the left arm of the sculpture, broke it into three pieces and the sling splintered at shoulder height. Fortunately, Vasari and Francesco Salviati secretly collected all the pieces and went to hide them in Salviati’s house.
The restoration was carried out later, under the Duke of Florence Cosimo I dei Medici.
In 1813 the middle finger of the right hand was damaged and was rebuilt in 1843 by Aristodemo Costoli who, in an attempt to clean the hand of concretions both mechanically with steel brushes and chemically with hydrochloric acid, damaged the surface. The damage was already done, but to try to protect it from the rain, the statue was temporarily covered.

The last damage was inflicted in 1991 on the left foot by a self-styled protester: a hammer blow chipped the first three toes, then restored with the recovered fragments.

The exposure of the David to the elements for about three centuries had caused its surface to float, especially where the rain was pouring (shoulders and upper part of the hair) and opened a series of small holes in the marble, the so-called “taroli”; so it was decided to protect the work by bringing it inside the Academy gallery.
For this purpose, the architect Emilio de Fabris built a new grandstand illuminated by a skylight,

and in August 1873 the David was transported to the Accademia Gallery on a special carriage on which it was harnessed, a carriage that was made to slide on wooden rails.
It took five days to transport the nearly seven-ton statue; the torrid climate in fact allowed to work only in the coolest hours from four to eleven in the morning.

The Chimera, this lion-dog with a snake’s tail and a goat’s head on its back, was formed from the transformation of fantastic animals from Syrian, Persian and Babylonian Assyrian art.

It appeared in the Western world through Greek, Etruscan and Italic art through commercial exchange in the 8th – 7th century BC. The variant in which the goat’s head emerges from a wing is one of the oldest representations.

But it is at the end of the 5th and beginning of the 4th century BC. that the Chimera with the Etruscan civilization reaches the apex of its artistic representation with the bronze of Arezzo.

There are various Greek myths relating to his birth: according to Homer it was a divine animal fed by Amisodaros king of Caria; for Hesiod it was the daughter of the Hydra of Lerna and the Nemean lion, granddaughter of Typhon and Echidna, sister of the sphinx. It symbolized chthonic power and of the underworld’s forces.

It was killed by the Corinthian hero Bellerophon of the lineage of Sisyphus, son of Eurynome and Glaucus and Poseidon: the myth tells that Bellerophon fled from his homeland for having involuntarily caused the death of his brother and went to Prince Preto in Argos, where, however, he refused the advances of his wife Sthenebea who took revenge by sending him to his father-in-law Lobate king of Lycia, who to expiate him invited him to perform a series of “labours” including that of killing the Chimera, helped by the winged horse Pegasus.

In Etruscan times the Chimera with Bellerophon was positioned to protect the city gates with an apotropaic function, and the Chimera of Arezzo was found near the ancient Etruscan gate corresponding to the current Porta San Laurentino;

It is probable that some representations of angels or saints with the same function of guardians of the doors derive from the memory of the ancient mythical episode, such as San Michele or San Giorgio often depicted with wings like Pegasus, the winged horse of Bellerophon, which they are about to kill the dragon, a distant relative of the Chimera.

At the beginning of the seventh century BC. C. the Chimera was still implemented in a purely decorative way, and at the end of the sixth century BC. its image began to appear on coins, gems, beetles, antefixes,

on ceramics,

In the 5th century BC. there was the return and diffusion of the myth of it with Bellerophon on Pegasus who kills it which continued even in Roman times appearing on ceramics, mosaics, frescoes, gems and coins.

The Chimera of Arezzo is male (although in ancient times the Chimera also appeared in female forms) and is represented wounded by enemy blows on the left thigh and on the neck of the goat’s head hanging on the left side now dying .

The animal’s body has been modeled with plastic naturalism, while the head still has a strong archaic flavor as a sculptural work of transition between two artistic styles.

Particularly convincing on the archaic nature of the head is the comparison with the clay drip from Metapontum dating back to the mid-5th century BC. and the red-figured Attic Rhyton of Ruvo from the end of the 5th century. B.C.

Other stylistic affinities can be found in the comparison with the funerary statue from Marciano in the Antikensamlung in Berlin and with the support paw in the Archaeological Museum in Florence.

The study of the Etruscan writing on the left leg tinscvil, engraved on the wax before casting, confirms the dating of the Chimera of Arezzo at the end of the 5th – beginning of the 4th century. B.C.

The myth of its killing foresees that the Chimera and the other two figures of Bellerophon and Pegasus are united in a single sculptural group, as often happens. But the Chimera, like other monstrous figures, is also represented by itself, i.e. she takes on an autonomous life as precisely in coins, ceramics, etc.
The Chimera of Arezzo may have been removed from a bronze group with Bellerophon riding Pegasus. However, the Etruscan dedication written on the left leg of the animal engraved on the wax before casting could also suggest a single casting. The bronze would then be buried together with other small bronzes in a votive deposit.

The sculpture is about 80 cm high and about 130 long including the tail, which however is not in its original position due to the eighteenth-century restoration.

Cosimo I dei Medici Duke of Tuscany ordered that both the Chimera and the other finds excavated in Arezzo be brought to him, and exhibited the large bronze in the rooms of Pope Medici Leo X in Palazzo Vecchio, as a symbol of all the fairs he won in the creation of the Kingdom of Etruria. Subsequently it was taken to the “midday corridor” of the Uffizi. Today it is in the Archaeological Museum of Florence.
The restoration was done by Cellini; the legs on the left side, found detached from the body just above the joint, were roughly reattached with lead casting.

In 1785 the sculptor Carradori recreated the tail of the animal (still not remade in the drawing of Verkruys Drawing of 1724 reproduced by Th. Dempster in 1720-1726)

not respecting the original trend, only the part closest to the body of the Chimera is a fragment of the original tail and the position of the snake biting the horn of the goat’s head was created to give it a foothold thanks to which to support its weight .

In 1933, in front of the Arezzo railway station, two fountains were placed with a replica of the Etruscan Chimera cast by the Aglietti foundry in the center of each one. During the Second World War they were removed and the metal melted down for military purposes.

After the war, the Municipality of Arezzo asked the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence to cast two replicas which were repositioned in place of the lost ones.

Several times this magnificent bronze conserved in the Archaeological Museum of Florence has been requested to be exhibited both in exhibitions and museums in various parts of the world have set up. And a serious problem arose: if the original is lost during transport by ship or by plane, how can it be done? Losing such a masterpiece would be a tragedy and a crime. The project of the “identicals” was therefore born by the Archaeological Superintendence, that is, the creation of absolutely identical replicas of these bronzes, to be sent to the various exhibitions and keep the original in the Museum.
The management of the Archaeological Museum of Florence therefore contacted the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry through the Bazzanti Gallery, to begin studying the possibility of performing a negative cast not only on the Etruscan Chimera, but also on two other Etruscan bronzes in the Museum: the Etruscan Minerva , and the Idolino, to then cast the identical ones in lost-wax bronze. Having ascertained the capacity and working quality of the foundry, he proceeded to give it the assignment.
Our technicians have reached the laboratories of the Archaeological Superintendency and have begun to execute, with extreme care, the mold of the Chimera in silicone rubber and mother mold in plaster.

From the mould, carefully transported to the foundry, the waxes to which the castings were applied were made and retouched, the casting performed and processed, the parts assembled and welded.

The “identical” of the Chimera was exhibited at the Florentine Archaeological Museum, and was then sent to various exhibitions such as the 2014 “Etruscan Seduction. From the secrets of Holkham Hall to the wonders of the British Museum” at Palazzo Casali in Cortona.
It is currently located at the entrance to the Archaeological Museum of Florence.

Donatello used friezes with cherubs in many of his works, such as for example in the two bronze pulpits in San Lorenzo in Florence, in the choir loft of the Florence Cathedral, in the pulpit of the Prato Cathedral. And he influenced various other sculptors in this sense. But in some artists such as Filippino Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Raffaello, Guadenzio Ferrari and others we can also perceive the influence that the discovery of the classic Roman frieze had in 1480 in Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome.
Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti known as il Buggiano, adopted by Brunelleschi when he was five years old, frequently puts putti in his works. But these look different from Donatello’s, they are swollen and with square faces, small noses with small nostrils, and with mysterious and slightly evil smiles showing their teeth, probably derived from those in Donatello’s choir loft. His washbasin in the Sacresty of the Masses of the Florence Cathedral is a classic-style aedicule with two large seated cherubs inside with enormous wings that seem to hold the spouts from which the water comes out.

The tomb of Giovanni de’ Medici and Piccarda Bueri from 1433 in the old sacristy of San Lorenzo consists of a sarcophagus with seated winged cherubs holding scrolls and flying winged cherubs holding crowns and the Medici coat of arms, more similar to those of Donatello.

Maso di Bartolomeo decorates the bronze gate cast in 1447 with lost wax of the Cappella della Cintola of the Cathedral of Prato with putti. One of these is blindfolded and has a bow and quiver like Eros but also has winged shoes like Donatello’s Attis. His anatomy is of Donatellian derivation, even if the muscular masses make him more like a little David than a putto. Thus he also brought the putti who are outside in the pulpit inside the cathedral.
In 1446 he also made the famous bronze casket of the Sacred Girdle of Prato, in which he repeats in ivory some Donatellian cherubs of the type and in dancing poses of those in the Pulpit, and the casket in pastiglia with the Orsini coat of arms with little cherubs playing musicians.

Filippo Lippi was obviously influenced by Donatello in the use of putti in his painting, since they both lived and worked in Florence. In the Madonna and Child in the Fitzwilliam Museum painted after 1430, the angels become very young winged cherubs,

equally in the Barbadori Altarpiece of 1438 and in the Madonna with Child, Saints and Angels of the Cini Collection of 1431 the typology of Lippi’s putti is confirmed and strengthened which, especially in the faces, will be one of his characteristics,

a feature that also denotes the typology of his Infant Jesuses, as in the Tarquinia Madonna of 1437 (Palazzo Barberini in Rome).

Andrea del Castagno paints in the frescoes of Villa Carducci of 1451,  above, some dancing putti similar in poses and style to those of the Pulpit in Prato.

Domenico Ghirlandaio is also influenced by Donatello in the theory of putti placed in the frieze of the fresco of the Birth of the Virgin in Santa Maria Novella in Florence of 1490, which overlap in the dance like those of Donatelli in the Cantoria.

Theories of dancing cherubs were sculpted as decorations by Bartolomeo Bellano in the Monument to Roccabonella in S. Francesco in Padua, from 1494, based on the throne of the Bellano Virgin directly inspired by Donatello’s Cantoria of the Florence Cathedral;
Niccolò Pizzolo, also from Padua, in the altarpiece of the Ovetari Chapel in the church of the Eremitani in Padua, has executed a frieze of putti running and playing with circles and crowns at the top, which derive from those of Donatello’s Cantoria;
Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, of Padua, worked in Bergamo at the Colleoni Chapel until 1476, where he executed the bas-relief sculptures on Istrian stone of rough putti crushing grapes, some copied even in pose from those of Donatello’s Pulpit of Prato, and other very chubby and fat cherubs in the lower frieze of the Colleoni Funeral Monument.
Throughout the cloister of the Certosa di Pavia, decorations with putti of the Donatellian type abound, most of which were sculpted by Amadeo around 1470.
In 1433 Donatello went to Padua to work on the altar of the Basilica of S. Antonio, whose sculptures, including those of his putti, influenced the painters of the north, especially Mantegna. Many of Mantegna’s paintings, including the frescoes for the ceiling and walls of the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua, derive from those by Donatello.

Donatello, in the bronze bas-relief of the Pietà in Padua for the first time, has putti support the body of Christ; the first to emulate him is Giovanni Bellini who copies this style in the Pietà at the Museo Correre in Venice (1460).

And he repeats this theme several times: in Christ in the Rimini Museum, from 1470, where the four putti-angels have butterfly wings and wear short tunics, as well as those in Mantegna’s Camera degli Sposi in Mantua,

in the Pietà of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, where the angel-putti begin to grow in age,

Antonello da Messina, who went to Venice in 1475, was inspired by Bellini to paint the dead Christ supported by three putti-angels (Museo Correre Venezia), and two years later another in which Christ seated is supported by a single putto-angel . (Prado Museum, Madrid)

The sculptor Giulio Monteverde creates a small great masterpiece with this model:
Jenner’s celebratory statue is very complex and represents the character who is inoculating the child with the vaccine. The light glides over the child’s naked body without creating intense chiaroscuro. Instead the doctor’s clothes and the drapery at the bottom of the sheet that falls to the ground are more evident and graphic. Furthermore, his hands are clearly highlighted by the contrast between light and shadow.
In the statue of Jenner who inoculates the child with the smallpox vaccine, Monteverde manages to make the emotions at stake appear immediately clear and transmits them to the viewer:
the child is naked, his skin is smooth, without wrinkles, and allows the light to slip through without creating strong chiaroscuro, which, together with his being at the center of the sculpture, is the focal point of the work.
Jenner, on the other hand, with the dress and with the fabric that descends from the cushion to the ground, has strong chiaroscuro, which highlights its tension, and which, although it is the largest figure, places the figure in the background.
The doctor’s attitude is concentrated and decisive, he is certain of his new theory, but he must overcome the fear of the doctors and the population; the child perceives his fear and is fearful in turn, even if he cannot fight back.
Monteverde wanted to express the courage, determination, and heroic nature of the gesture, if the child is actually his son as legend has it, and the certainty of his science, which in an instant surpasses the clichés of the people and other doctors.

The sculpture was commissioned, after the sculptor had sent it to the Universal Exhibition in Vienna in 1873, where it won the gold medal, by the Duchess of Galliera Maria Brignole Sale de Ferrari, a great philanthropist for the city of Genoa .

Upon her death, the Duchess bequeathed the work by testamentary bequest and since 1884 it has been in the collections of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Genoa.
As has been described, the Monteverde sculpture is three-dimensionally complex, with many undercuts that would have made the bronze casting extremely challenging. It was therefore necessary to dissect the model into many parts, studied in such a way as to guarantee the perfect result of these in the lost wax casting in bronze.

We continued with the execution of the negative casts in silicone resin and plaster mother mold of each sectioned part of the model, using a special type of liquid silicone that guaranteed the “reading” of every detail of the sculpture and its surface.
From these we obtained the hollow waxes of the thickness that would have been necessary to have in bronze.

Once the waxes have been extracted from the negative forms,

have moved on to the delicate stage of retouching.

It was necessary to reassemble all the wax parts to find the whole model, checking that they all matched perfectly, and the wax parts retouched,

After other passages and firings they were cast in bronze, obtaining the raw castings identical to the waxes themselves

One of the two bronze sculptures is patinated.

The finished sculpture, waiting to be shipped to the customer.

The sculpture is then installed on the marble base, created by Studio Bazzanti, at the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute in Los Angeles.

The client asked us to create a small model of the sculpture. Our sculptor Eleonora Villani get down to work and after a long time she obtained a perfect reduction of Monteverdi’s “Jenner”.
This model has also been dissected into several parts,

From which the negative silicone and plaster mother molds were made,

From which all the small parts in hollow wax were obtained.

The tiny wax parts were reassembled to obtain a complete wax replica, on which a negative mould of the complete model was made, from which the bronze casting was obtained, which, cleaned and chiseled with particular care, became the model for the subsequent 100 replicas.

The number of replicas is limited, and each specimen is numbered in cents, and is stamped with the logo of the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry and of the company that ordered the replicas (EITM).

The marble bases are made, then the sculptures are patinated and the Carrara marble base is applied.

Another important bronze casting by Donatello is that of Judith and Holofernes in natural size (236 cm with a bronze base) today in front of the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence, but probably commissioned by the Medici for the courtyard of their building. The heroic Jewish Judith is about to cut off the head of Holofernes, general of Nebucodonosor, completely drunk, thus saving his people.

On the pillow in which Oloferne is seated there is the signature of Donatello OPVS – DONATELLI – FLO, and also the writing EXEMPLUM – SAL – PVB – CIVES – POS- MCCCCXCV, a writing that was added when the statue was placed outside the Palazzo della Signoria in 1495.
But by August 1464, when it was still in the Medici palace, there were two other writings on the basement that had been lost: “Regna cadunt luxu surgent virtutibus urbes caesa vides humili with superb manu”, that is: “The kingdoms fall by lust, rise again thanks to the virtues: here is the neck of pride cut from the hand of humility “. And between the years 1464 and 1469 Piero de ’Medici added a second inscription: Regna Cadunt / Salus Publica / Petrus Medices Cos. Fi. Libertati simul et fortitudini hanc mulieris statuam quo cives invicto constantique animo ad rem pub. redderunt dedicavit, that is “Piero son of Cosimo dedicated the statue of this woman to that freedom and fortitude conferred on the republic by the unconstrained and constant spirit of the citizens.” Everything suggests that for Donatello and his peers Giuditta, heavily clothed and covered, represented continence that overcomes pride and lust symbolized by Holofernes limply seated on a pillow. And, by definition, the republic, like Florence and Venice, was compared to ancient Greece and Rome and opposed to tyrannical states like Milan, the enemy of Florence. Holofernes was the general of a totalitarian monarch. Giuditta, savior of the freedom of Israel, was related to the resistance of the Florentine Republic against the tyranny of the Visconti of Milan.
On the triangular base of the statue there are three bas-reliefs based on the cherubs. On the first one winged, naked or semi-naked putti of different ages, they harvest and carry the grapes in the baskets; below is a lying drunk figure, wearing a mask and holding a jug. It is a Bacchic scene, as in the feast in honor of Dionysus in ancient Greece, where they acted masked actors.

On the second bas-relief two putti crush the grapes inside a crater, also decorated on the edge with putti and garlands. A putto drinks directly from the crater, another pulls up his robe, two are lying down drunk.

On the third bas-relief a putto sitting on Dionysus’s lap kisses him, others play horns and dance.

The three scenes represent a bacchanal and its deleterious effects, and have nothing to do with the Christian scenes of harvest and wine production used in a Eucharistic sense. They refer to the drunkenness of Holofernes. In the “Republica” Plato writes that drunkenness transforms man in a tyrant, like the tyrannical Eros, a neo-Platonic interpretation followed by Donatello.
Also on Judith’s dress, putti appear: on the front of the bodice two naked winged cherubs support the circle, on the other side two more putti with desperate faces are at the side of a vase, others behind, others on the right cuff.

Unlike those of the bas-reliefs, the cherubs on Judith’s dress symbolize her victory.

Donatello’s last masterpieces are the two lost wax bronze pulpits for the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, executed after 1460. It is likely that at the time of his death in 1466 they were completed by his helpers Bartolomeo Bellano and Bertoldo of Giovanni, the latter also a friend of Lorenzo the Magnificent. They have suffered various vicissitudes including the arrangement on the columns at the beginning of the ‘500 and a subsequent reassembly in the middle of the’ 500. In both of them Donatello created a narrow trabeation band in which the small putti appear, and it is the first time that this type of decoration reappears after the classical era, in fact Donatello was inspired by the Roman sarcophagi. In these two pulpits the putti return to be secondary elements that comment on the scenes below, with Bacchic dances and references to the grape harvest and wine.

The Pulpit of the Passion

It consists of seven scenes: Prayer in the Garden of Olives, Jesus by Pilate and Caiaphas, Crucifixion, Compianto, Burial (the two bas-reliefs of the Flagellation and of St. John the Evangelist are made of wood and date back to the ‘600). In the trabeation of this pulpit the putti are Bacchic because they refer to the work of the vineyard and the wine but are not drunk, and symbolize, in the context of the Passion of Christ, the Eucharist. In ancient times the cult of Dionysus promised a life after death, and its rites included drinking wine. For the Neo Platonists of the Renaissance, Dionysus prefigures Christ with his promise of salvation, given to the initiated through participation in the Christian Mass with the offering of bread and wine. There are also some parallels in the life of Dionysus-Bacchus and that of Christ: they both had a miraculous birth, both performed miracles with wine, both have grapes as attributes, in both religions there are aspects of suffering, death and life in the afterlife.
We see another connection to the scene of Jesus in the Olive grove in two cherubs to the right of the trabeation kissing foreshadowing the traitor kiss of Judas.

In the bas-relief of the Crucifixion one of the putti on the left is navigating holding a sail.

Sailing putti are present in the ancient frescoes and mosaics as a symbol of the passage of life to the afterlife, and in the Crucifixion the passage from life to the death of Christ. In that of the Burial, in addition to playing with grapes, the Eucharistic symbol, two cherubs play musical instruments and two embrace to console themselves.

and also on the capitals of the pillars, putti holding garlands appear, just as putti appear on the capitals of the Crucifixion and of the Lamentation.

Others are placed above the capitals of the columns of Christ before Caiaphas and Pilate.

The pulpit of the Resurrection

it is composed of eight scenes: The Pious Women at the Sepulcher, Descent to Limbo, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, Christ derided, St. Luke the Evangelist, and also this the entablature with cherubs.
In the Pious Women at the Sepulcher a putto is sleeping, in harmony with the two soldiers on the far right of the bas-relief.

Within the scene of the Ascension winged putti fly attached to the Christ’s mantle

and in the trabeation of the putti they are raising a fallen herm, and on the left others raise the statue of a putto with the cornucopia. They could both be symbols of Christ’s resurrection.