information:filtering, quality:correction
Stiacciato relief style

Donatello became famous for his reliefs, especially his development of a very "low" or shallow relief style, called stiacciato (literally "flattened-out"), where all parts of the relief are low. This contrasted with the developing technique of other sculptors who included very high and low relief in the same composition, with Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" doors (1424-1451) for the Florence Baptistery a leading example.

Donatello's "first milestone" in the technique is his marble Saint George Freeing the Princess on the base of his Saint George for Orsanmichele. The figures project slightly forward, but "by skilful overlaps are brought back into a tightly-stretched unified skin-plane which is scarcely broken in surface relief to suggest a deep, though not limitless, space". The relief does not provide a "completely coherent system of perspective" (nor did any Italian work for some five or six years after), but the arcaded hall on the right represents a partial scheme of perspective.

His next major development in this direction was in bronze, still a relatively new medium for him. Ghiberti had been involved from 1417 for a project for the font at the Siena Baptistery; it seems to have been his idea to have six bronze, rather than marble, reliefs, and these were allocated to him, Jacopo della Quercia, and a local father and son team. By 1423 Ghiberti had not even started work, and one relief, The Feast of Herod was given to Donatello instead (the overall subject was the life of John the Baptist).

This is placed low, the bottom at about the level of the viewer's knee, and the relief allows for that. The composition has figures in three receding planes defined by the architecture. At left Herod recoils in horror as he is presented with John the Baptist's head on a platter; to the right of centre Salome is still dancing. In a space behind musicians are playing, and beyond them John's head is presented to two figures, one presumably Herodias. It does not represent a full one-point perspective scheme, as there are two vanishing points, perhaps intended to create subliminal impressions of tension and disharmony in the viewer, reflecting the grisly subject.

Other stiacciato reliefs include The Assumption of the Virgin in the wall-tomb in Sant'Angelo a Nilo, Naples, (1426-1428, see below), the Madonna of the Clouds and Pazzi Madonna, both c. 1425−1430 and domestic pieces respectively with and without a carved background, The Ascension with Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter (1428–30), for an unknown location but in the Medici collection by the end of the century, and a small Virgin and Child (perhaps 1426, probably by his workshop).

At all times Donatello and his workshop made more conventional reliefs, at a variety of depths and sizes, and in different materials.