This coloured relief produced by Donatello's workshop shows how closely sculpture might resemble paintings, often adopting a similar style, of the same period. The relief is extremely shallow, only just three-dimensional, but appears much deeper.
Donatello has used foreshortening in the drawings of the individual figures, and perspective in the planning of the space as a whole so that the arch in which the Virgin sits seems to be set much further back than the musician angels at the front.
Painters including Masaccio and Benozzo Gozzoli clearly had Donatello's figures in mind in these paintings.
Top: Donatello and workshop 'Virgin and Child with Saints and Musician Angels', about 1425-32 © The Victoria and Albert Museum.
Bottom left: Detail from Masaccio, 'The Virgin and Child', 1426.
Bottom right: Detail from Gozzoli Benozzo, 'The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels', 1460s.
