Donatello's Lost Dovizia for the Mercato Vecchio: Wealth and Charity as Florentine Civic Virtues

Donatello's Dovizia (ca. 1430), a heroically scaled allegory that stood atop a column in the Mercato Vecchio, was most probably a Communal commission. An idealized female figure in forceful movement with a large basket of fruit atop her head and a cornucopia on one arm, she is related in iconography to contemporary writings by Leonardo Bruni and other humanists which suggest that she embodied the new concept of the interrelationship between Civic Wealth and Florentine Civic Charity. Created at a time of financial instability and change, the Dovizia was calculated to express the stability and beneficence of the Florentine Commune.