Ghiberti's original Baptistery door panels and the cantorie (choir loft) reliefs by Donatello and Luca della Robbia (1400-82) keep company with Donatello's Mary Magdalen and Michelangelo's Pietà (not to be confused with his more famous Pietà in St. Peter's in Rome). Renaissance sculpture is in part defined by its revolutionary realism, but in its palpable suffering Donatello's Magdalen goes beyond realism. Michelangelo's heart-wrenching Pietà was unfinished at his death; the female figure supporting the body of Christ on the left was added by Tiberio Calcagni (1532-65), and never has the difference between competence and genius been manifested so clearly.
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