7: Matusewicz-Donatello's Feast of Herod

In his Feast of Herod Donatello uses perspective to direct the viewer through a story and toward the central figure while keeping the placement his work as a small piece of a larger story in mind. Donatello’s gilded bronze relief tells the story of King Herod. By manipulating the small space, Donatello is able to create three receding levels in which the story can be followed. In the background the viewer sees the head of John the Baptist being brought to Salome. In the middle-ground, a female playing a musical instrument is seen towards the right side of the piece while two men appear on the left turning to look at her. Between the second level and the foreground Donatello uses the architecture to show his perspective lines. On the closest group of arches, Donatello places a few jutting beams to emphasize the central vanishing point, bringing the viewer from the top two layers down to the main scene.

In the foreground King Herod is seen receiving the head of John the Baptist. Further down the table sits a man displaying a great amount of emotion. Leaning to the side, he separates himself from the king almost in an attempt to join the others in the group at the end of the table. The way his hand is set on his face serves not only to evoke emotion from the viewer, but the way it is set on the orthagonal draws the attention both back to the head of John the Baptist on the platter and out to the edges. And though it is difficult to determine the meaning behind the lines to the left of his shoulder, Donatello is clearly playing with perspective in the cut out brick. The man sitting to his right also has a slanted arm which, from the elbow to the shoulder, follows the perspective lines of the upper half of the entire relief from the top left and right to the center at a 90 degree angle. This playing with position allows the viewers to look back and forth across the table in comparison and draw out of it what they find most important. The overall perspective lines, which move from the outward edges to the center, if looked at in the opposite direction, show how this relief is but one image in a series surrounding the base of an altarpiece. Placed in the center of the ambulatory, this piece would be viewed by many. Because the viewer would likely want to see all of the images surrounding the base and easily recognize the scene being depicted, it is important that Donatello uses perspective to draw the eye to the center and well as key elements to depict the most important characters in the scene as well as the reactions of others.