Throughout his career, Donatello (1383/6–1464) produced a number of sculptures with surfaces that simulated a more precious material than the one underneath. Typically motivated by an ambition to reproduce ancient feats, and fiercely collaborative and trans-medial in nature, Donatello’s surface cunning provoked admiration as well as unease. By reading these sculptures alongside
other practices aimed at improving the appearance of something, but not its essence, and by examining the preoccupations these “cosmetic acts” reveal in a culture where the lure and distrust of surface appearances were intertwined, we can see Donatello in a new light – as a cosmetic provocateur. The exercise also clarifies why his patrons and later artists largely rejected this dimension of his practice.

Dr. Daniel Zolli is the Agnes Scollins Carey Early Career Professor in the Arts and Assistant Professor of Art History at The
Pennsylvania State University. He is co-editor of The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy (2020) and Contamination and Purity
in Early Modern Art and Architecture (2021) and is currently finishing a monograph on theories and practices of experimentation in
Donatello’s workshops, from which this talk derives.