Nanni di Banco

(ca. 1384-1421)

   Florentine sculptor of the early 15th century. He was contemporary with the pioneering Renaissance sculptor Donatello but showed a strong classicizing tendency that is much more closely linked to the Gothic sculpture of the 13th and 14th century than to the new style that was beginning to emerge. His most famous work is the Quattro Coronati/Four Saints made about 1410-1414 for one of the niches on the exterior of the church of Or San Michele at Florence. Although the figures, especially the heads of two of the four saints, show the results of the artist's study of Ro-man sculpture, the work, quite unlike the St. Mark carved at almost the same time by Donatello, could not be separated from its architec-tural setting. The bodies of his four figures, however, have a monu-mental solidity which is unlike medieval classicizing sculpture and suggests the sculpture of the new Renaissance style. Nanni's last commission, not quite completed at his premature death in 1421, is a relief, The Assumption of the Virgin, carved for the local cathedral. His treatment of the body and especially of the draperies covering the massive and energetic bodies suggests that he, too, was moving in the stylistic direction that would mark early Renaissance rather than late medieval sculpture.