How was it made? Donatello's marble carving technique | V&A?

Donatello’s statue was made by taking one huge block of white marble and carefully chipping away everything that wasn’t part of the person inside.

Think about a rough rock you might find in your backyard. It looks like just a lumpy stone, right? But sometimes, if you squint, it sort of looks like a sleeping dog or a hidden face. Donatello had a superpower: he could see the perfect statue hiding inside that rough stone before he even picked up his tools.

Donatello didn’t just hack at the rock. He used chisels, which are heavy metal sticks with sharp points, and a wooden mallet (a hammer) to tap them gently. Imagine you have a big block of LEGO bricks glued together, but you only want to keep the blue ones. You carefully pop out the wrong pieces one by one. That is what he did with the stone!

After the basic shape was revealed, the statue looked bumpy and rough, like the skin of an orange. Donatello used smaller tools to smooth it out until it felt cool and silky under your fingers. He also paid close attention to details, like carving deep lines for hair or folds in clothes so they cast little shadows that make the cloth look real.

Most people think a statue looks exactly like the person standing there. But Donatello made sure you could tell it was stone by keeping some of those rough chisel marks visible. This is called non-finito, or "unfinished" style. It reminds us that this isn’t clay or plastic; it is hard, solid rock that has been worked into beauty.

So, when you look at his marble work, remember: it started as a giant, heavy boulder. Donatello just helped it find its true shape by removing the extra parts!