Das Taufbecken von Siena / The Baptismal Font from Siena

Donatello’s ‘Putto with Tambourine’ (1429) is the starting point of this book, focusing on the plaster model of the baptismal font of Siena, over five and a half metres high, from the collection of the Gipsformerei, cast for the Berlin museums in the course of a major casting project in the 1870s. Text: Bilingual German and English

Using a major work in the sculpture collection of the Bode Museum in Berlin, Donatello’s Putto with Tambourine (1429), as a starting point, this book focuses on a very special object: the plaster model of the baptismal font of Siena, over five and a half metres high, from the collection of the Gipsformerei, which was cast for the Berlin museums in the course of a major casting project in the 1870s. The baptismal font in the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Siena is a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance. It was created between 1416 and 1434 by six sculptors, including Donatello. His putto was once part of the baptistery, but had been missing in Siena for centuries before it was acquired by Wilhelm Bode for the sculpture collection in 1902. It was Bode who initiated the moulding of over a hundred Renaissance sculptures in Italy around 25 years earlier. Since then, the Sculpture Collection has had a collection of casts, which has now been forgotten, while the historical moulds and models are still in use in the plaster moulding shop to this day. In photographs by Fabian Frohlich and five text contributions by Aurelia Badde, Eckart Marchand, Ricardo Mendonca, Neville Rowley and Veronika Tocha, the plaster model of the baptismal font is comprehensively honoured and further contextualised in this book. Not only does it trace the journey of discovery during the restoration of the model, it also reconstructs the historical context of the original mould of the baptismal font and its history of reproduction. The putto is embedded in the history of art and collecting and the significance of plaster casts is traced back to the time of Donatello.

• Edited by Neville Rowley
• Edited by Veronika Tocha