Stiacciato

Donatello's schiacciato work Herod's Banquet, Siena Baptistery.

Schiacciato is a technique which allows a sculptor to create a recessed or relief sculpture with carving only millimetres deep.[1] To give the illusion of greater depth, the thickness gradually decreases from the foreground to the background. In some ways it is more similar to a 2D image than a 3D sculpture and so the relief can use perspective. Vasari writes of the technique:

The technique was mainly used in the 15th and 16th centuries, begun and dominated by Donatello.[2] The earliest surviving example is his St George Freeing the Princess (1416-1417) and his other works in the genre include the Pazzi Madonna (1430), The Assumption of the Virgin (Sant'Angelo a Nilo, Naples, 1426-1428) and Herod's Banquet (Siena Baptistery, 1423-1427).

References

  1. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/stiacciato/
  2. Rolf C. Wirtz, Donatello, Könemann, Colonia 1998.
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