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'Touch the Truth'? Desiderio da Settignano, Renaissance relief and the body of Christ

Research imperatives and process: The article makes an argument for the dialectical relationship between choices in relief mode and the functions of sacred imagery in Renaissance carving, especially that of Desiderio da Settignano. Working out from Ruskin and Stokes and relatively recent presentations of Renaissance relief sculpture at exhibition, the case is made for the appeal by Florentine sculptors to touch as a measure of truth. At the centre is a reading of Desiderio’s sacrament tabernacle for San Lorenzo that shows how and why Desiderio invented an ‘in-between’ mode, placing the viewer in limbo between the perception of a past event and a timeless icon. The artist emerges as a significant in-between figure whose visionary experiments, developing from Donatello, are never fully absorbed by Verrocchio and the next generation sculptors. The article contributes to recent rethinking of Renaissance relief sculpture, while also addressing sculpture's theorisation in relation to the senses in the Early Modern. The Desiderio exhibitions of 2007 offered a rare opportunity to analyse the complexity of this relationship by moving the accent to the complex ontology of the body that was raised by Eucharistic subjects and their implications for sculptural practice at a time of rapid changes in representation.