ANTONIO DEI NARNI by Donatello, Florence, Museo Nazionale

In the revival of classical literature animating the Italian Renaissance, the works of Plato were the most important influence. Of these the Symposium and the Phaedrus were perhaps the most popular, permeating the art and thought of the period.

From the Phaedrus derives the image of love, a charioteer with the two steeds or aspects of passion: the rearing violence of the carnal in control of the intellectual. By this Donatello transforms a portrait of an individual young man of the Renaissance into a poetic symbol of homosexual love.

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