"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

04 March 2015

Speak.

 Donatello, Prophet, 1436


He seems anxious, if not anguished: fraught with pent-up emotion. His head tilts forward with eyes wide and the lips of his large mouth parted. He appears about to say something. A legend recounted by Vasari, a century later, has it that Donatello was so affected by the lifelikeness of the statue that, while working on it, “he would look at it and keep muttering, ‘Speak, damn you, speak!’”

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