Desiderio da Settignano, a sculptor of Renaissance Florence whose career was short and brilliant, was unsurpassed in his ability to make hard marble appear as soft and ephemeral as human flesh. He lived in a time — c. 1429-64 — when the central mystery of the Christian faith, how the eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us, was the topic of intense contemplation and debate, especially centered on the miracle of transubstantiation in the Mass.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington owns four works by this rare artist: a large ciborium, a delicately carved container for the Eucharistic host, that stands in the hall leading to a garden court where concerts are held; two busts of small boys which may represent the Christ Child; and a low-relief plaque of “St. Jerome in the Desert.”
From now until Oct. 8, these subtle sculptures can be seen with the rest of Desiderio’s art in a special exhibition. Completing a tour that began in Paris and Florence, the show encompasses all his work except the big tombs. They cannot be moved but are recorded in photographs and described in the catalogue.
The common thread running through Desiderio’s work is making the Incarnation seem as real as possible, and with it bringing to life the idea of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
If he did not invent the marble bust of the young boy, Desiderio was the most gifted master of this form. The idea of creating such images to influence the moral development of children seems to go back to the influential Dominican of Florence, Cardinal Giovanni Dominici (d. 1419).
Dominici had written, “Have paintings in the home, of holy little boys or young virgins, in which your child when still in swaddling clothes may delight, as being like himself, and may be seized upon by the like thing, with actions and signs attractive to infancy. And as I say for paintings, so I say for sculptures. The Virgin Mary is good to have, with the Child on her arm. … A good figure would be Jesus suckling, Jesus sleeping on His mother’s lap, Jesus standing politely before her. … In the same way He may mirror Himself in the holy Baptist, dressed in camel skin, a small boy entering the desert. … It would do no harm if he saw Jesus and the Baptist, the little Jesus and the Evangelist grouped together.”
Desiderio made his carved children as energetic and alert as the living children who must have been the models, and yet endowed them with an ideal grace that suggests they were meant to be more than family portraits.
Just as he captured a moment of laughter in the busts he recorded it, too, in the low-relief sculptures of religious subjects.
One of these, the round plaque or tondo of the young “Christ and St. John the Baptist,” is unique. This may be the first image of Christ and St. John together as young boys. Later, the episode of the divine and human child meeting as infants became very popular first in Florence and then all over Europe, capturing a moment that might have happened although not recorded in the Gospel. Desiderio perfectly captured a look of bliss in Christ’s face, and of awe on the Baptist’s face. It has been suggested that this work might have been commissioned by the ruling Medici family to celebrate the birth of a second grandson in 1454.
Each of Desiderio’s marble reliefs of the “Madonna and Child” has its own charm and implicit meaning. There was an old tradition, going back to the Greek icons, of showing the Virgin as serious, pondering her Son’s sorrowful destiny, and a Christ Child old far beyond his years. Desiderio kept the iconic form of Mary pointing to the Savior, but changed the mood. Now we enter into her affection for the Child and His delight in her. His technical mastery of carving in very thin layers and evoking the softness of flesh gets under our skin, creating the kind of skill that Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo later used to create their sublime religious images.
In the Madonna panels, Desiderio shows us how vulnerable our Lord was to the infinite pain of His coming sacrifice. The open-mouthed faces of the Blessed Virgin and St. John as they display the body of the dead Christ in the panel from the tabernacle of San Lorenzo (cat. 23) remind us of how close, emotionally, are the extremes of joy and sorrow, just as the Incarnation and the atonement come together for us at every Mass.

Hamerman teaches Art and Catechesis at Christendom’s Notre Dame Graduate School in Alexandria.

(c) Copyright 2007 by Arlington Catholic Herald