High Altar (detail, also below), Basilica del Santo, Padua, c. 1446-1450, Donatello
The Giotto painting in the Scrovegni Chapel was a gorgeous offering to God. Like Giotto's work, Donatello sculpture always looks like it has been finished by his assistants or a hired professional, a common practice in Renaissance Italy. The organic quality in these pieces makes you feel like Donatello is in his element with clay modelling. The church where the late Donatello's High Altar is housed has an interesting mathematical equation with the design. You feel the altar is placed in the form of a cross and is brought forward to demonstrate this. The position the church faces would have been acknowledged by God and the front entrance also participates to this idea.
