The 'Chellini Madonna', by Donatello, about 1450

One of the Victoria and Albert Museum's most prized possessions is the bronze roundel given by the sculptor Donatello to his doctor Giovanni Chellini in lieu of payment. It found its way into the Museum on a visitors’ day in 1966.

On 27 August 1456, the physician Giovanni Chellini Samminiati recorded in his daybook that in lieu of payment he had received ‘a roundel the size of a trencher in which was sculpted the Virgin Mary with the Child at her neck and two angels on each side, all of bronze, and on the outer side hollowed out so that melted glass could be cast on to it and would make the same figures as those on the other side’. The donor was Donatello, arguably the greatest sculptor of the early Renaissance in Italy, whom the doctor was treating for a serious illness.

This letter makes the so-called ‘Chellini Madonna’ one of the most important works by Donatello as it can be categorically linked to documentation. In addition to making glass replicas, the roundel may have been intended as a birth tray. This was a flat tray laden with sweetmeats that was brought to a mother after childbirth – examples can be seen in Room 12. The two putti on the right-hand side are carrying a heaped bowl in offering, perhaps alluding to the possible function of the object. However, the reverse of the roundel is a unique feature. No other bronze has such a precise negative mould, though a thinly cast plaquette can sometimes show the ‘ghost’ of an image.

Once the Museum had acquired the roundel, Chellini’s comment about its intended use was put to the test by the glass department of the Royal College of Art and the glass firm of Venini on Murano, Venice. The experiment was successful and one of the glass roundels is displayed with the bronze.

Apart from the object’s intriguing early history, its life after Chellini is also noteworthy. The former Keeper of Sculpture and then Director, John Pope-Hennessy was aware of the roundel’s existence through reproductions, including one at the Soane Museum, London. He recounts in his autobiography that he was leaving a dinner party at the American Embassy when he ‘ran into David Carritt [the art dealer], who told me that he had found a circular 15th-century bronze relief in use as an ashtray. I asked him to let me see it, and he brought it round the following day. Its front face corresponded with that of the other reliefs. But what mattered was the reverse, and when I turned it over I found the mould described by Chellini.’ The roundel was destined to be exported to the United States. However, after what Pope-Hennessy described as a ‘rather undignified public appeal in the subway’, as well as the sale of limited silver casts from the reverse, it was secured in 1976 and took its place in the Museum’s outstanding collection of Italian sculpture.

A doctor's account book

'I record that on 27th of August, 1456, while I was treating Donato called Donatello, the singular and principal master in making figures of bronze of wood and terracotta ... he of his kindness and in consideration of the medical treatment which I had given and was giving for his illness gave me a roundel the size of a trencher in which was sculpted the Virgin Mary with the Child at her neck and two angels on each side, all of bronze, and on the outer side hollowed out so that melted glass could be cast on to it and it would make the same figures as those on the other side.'
Giovanni Chellini, Donatello's doctor

The author of the account book, Giovanni Chellini, is known to us from a portrait bust in marble signed by Antonio Rossellino and dated in 1456 – the same year as the gift from Donatello recorded above. It is one of the earliest dated portraits in this particular form and is one of Antonio Rossellino's finest creations.

Giovanni Chellini was born about 1372 in San Miniato al Tedesco, a provincial town in Tuscany, and died in 1462. Between 1401 and 1403 he had a meteoric career in the University of Florence, in the faculty of philosophy and logic. Thereafter, he seems to have abandoned University life and turned to the practice of medicine, for which he became famous, rising to the rank of Consul in the Guild of Doctors in 1455.

Indeed, he seems to have made a fortune, for he owned several houses and shops in Florence and had so much silver plate that he was in a position to lend appropriate pieces to other citizens when they were appointed to high public office. He was also generous with books from his extensive library.

He founded in 1455 a chapel dedicated to the medical patron saints, Cosmas and Damian, in the church of San Domenico in his native town, where he was later buried in a tomb by Bernardo Rossellino, of which only the effigy survives. Chellini was obviously interested in sculpture about 1456, perhaps following his appointment as Consul in the Guild of Doctors a year before, but his contact with Donatello was, as far as we know, restricted to that of doctor and patient, apart from the gift of the roundel in lieu of a medical fee.

Donatello (1386–1466)

Donatello was the greatest sculptor of the early Renaissance in Italy and the most versatile sculptor of all time, unmatched in his technical and expressive range. Born in Florence in 1386, he trained under Lorenzo Ghiberti, who was making his first pair of bronze doors for the Baptistry, and began carving statues of life-size and over in marble for Florence Cathedral and the Guild Hall, Or San Michele, between 1408 and 1430: most famous of these, perhaps, is the 'St. George' (about 1415).

Donatello was one of the pioneers of scientific perspective, along with Masaccio and Brunelleschi, as can be seen in his 'Ascension of Christ and the Giving of the Keys to St. Peter'. For his private patrons, the Medici family, he made his bronze David to stand on a pedestal in the middle of their palace: this is celebrated as being the first life-size nude of the Renaissance, recalling Graeco-Roman statues of athletes.

Leaving Florence for Padua in 1443, Donatello began to concentrate on sculpture in bronze, producing the great equestrian statue of Gattamelata and the 'Madonna, Saints' and reliefs of the 'Miracles of St. Anthony' for the high altar of the Basilica. After a decade, he returned to Tuscany, dividing his time between Florence and Siena. His principal sculptures were highly dramatic - 'St Mary Magdalene' carved in wood and painted, 'Judith and Holofernes' and 'St John the Baptist' cast in bronze. Also in this vein were his last sculptures, a series of narrative reliefs in bronze for the pulpits of San Lorenzo, commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici for his parish church in order, so we are told, that Donatello should not be without work. This implies that the sculptor's late, highly expressive style was out of touch with contemporary taste in Florence, which perhaps preferred the gilded elegance of Ghiberti's 'Gates of Paradise', unveiled in 1452.

Throughout his career, Donatello made reliefs of the 'Madonna and Child', in marble, terracotta and bronze: the earliest, by general consent, is the 'Pazzi Madonna' (Berlin Museums), dating from the 1420s. Much later is the gilded terracotta 'Madonna' in the Museum, close in style to the Chellini bronze. At least two compositions of the Madonna were designed while Donatello was in Padua, for while no originals survive, plaster casts exist in Verona.

His last documented 'Madonna' is a large roundel set in the wall of Siena Cathedral, originally destined for a chapel inside and carved largely by assistants (1457). The present bronze is important not only for its artistic merits but because it must have been produced in or before 1456, the date of its gift to Dr Chellini. Indeed, there is reason to believe that it may have been made a few years earlier, while Donatello was in Padua.

The Madonna Roundel

The Madonna is in the form of a roundel 28 cm in diameter (111 inches) , cast in bronze by the cire perdu process. It is unique in having a negative mould cast on the reverse, to permit reproduction The image of the 'Virgin and Child' carved in relief in a roundel (tondo in Italian) was rare before the Renaissance. In the 15th century, however, after its introduction by Bernardo Rossellino on the tomb of Leonardo Bruni (died 1444) in Santa Croce, it became a standard element in the upper part of wall-monuments.

The circular design corresponded to the new Renaissance repertory of architectural forms based on pure, geometric shapes. In emphasizing certain internal architectural features in his roundel, instead of treating it simply as a frame, Donatello is advancing beyond Bernardo Rossellino's innovation. We seem to see the Virgin and Child through a round aperture in a thick wall and behind a railing.

The crescent shape of the reveal above, combined with the forward and upward bulge of the railing, define a shallow stage for the action and suggest a low viewing point. This is a dramatic advance over earlier roundels of the Virgin and Child on the same small scale, where the space is not defined. The architectural quality of the composition was such that within a few years (about 1457) Donatello adapted it for the large roundel in Siena Cathedral, where the spectator indeed saw it from below; the illusion of seeing figures within a 'port-hole' is very convincing.

The roundel is unique in having a flange like a dish, and no definite explanation can at present be offered. However, there was in Italy a custom of bringing to a newly-delivered mother a round (or octagonal) tray with sweetmeats, and the 'birth-tray' itself (desco da parto) was usually gaily painted and gilded, sometimes with appropriate scenes of the births of saints. Two baby angels at the right are carrying towards the Virgin and Child a bowl heaped, probably, with food, and there may be some connection between this imaginary activity and the actual shape of the roundel.

Purchased on the Grand Tour

A fascinating aspect of the history of the Madonna roundel is that it was brought to England by a young aristocrat who had been on the Grand Tour, completing his education in the manner then normal. It was probably sent home between 1748 and 1749 by Lord Malton (later the second Marquis of Rockingham) for Wentworth Woodhouse, which his father was remodelling.

This means that it was in this country three-quarters of a century earlier than the 'Taddei tondo' by Michelangelo, which Sir George Beaumont presented to the Royal Academy in 1823. Rockingham probably bought it from the descendants of Chellini for its artistic and historic merit: the very fact that he included it as the only sculpture among Sherwin's engravings of his collection of paintings suggests that he attached importance to it. This is one of the earliest occasions when an Englishman brought home the equivalent in sculpture of what were later to become prized as Italian Primitive paintings.

Glass casting

Chellini's claim that the negative mould on the reverse of his Madonna roundel was designed to produce casts in glass has been doubted hitherto, for none is known to survive. Smaller plaques dating from the 16th century were, however, cast in glass. Experiments with bronze moulds have therefore been undertaken in the Glass Department of the Royal College of Art, London; and by the glass firm of Venini on Murano, Venice, by courtesy of the Amici dei Musei Veneziani.

These prove conclusively that casting in glass – using only basic, craftsmen's methods which would have been available in the 15th century – is feasible, though technically demanding. The resultant glass plaques, plain or coloured, are so beautiful as to suggest that the sculptor may have designed the composition specifically for reproduction in this unusual, transparent medium.

In the 1450s the idea of such figurative reliefs for insertion in architectural contexts was current, for Filarete, the architect-sculptor, alluded to it in his Treatise (written between 1460 to 1465). When in Milan about 1455, he was in touch with the greatest Venetian expert in glass of his day, Angelo Barovier of Murano (1405–60). Donatello, who spent a decade in Padua (1443–53), only 12 miles from Venice, may well have known Angelo too, for he was widely travelled and internationally famous for his expertise with glass: in 1459 the Florentines even tried to tempt him to their city, but his death intervened. In this context, Donatello - always an inventive and unconventional artist - may well have decided to experiment with the new medium, just as today sculptors are exploiting the potential of plastics.

Written by Charles Avery, 1976, and published in the V&A Masterpieces series.
Revised 2006.