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'con uno inbasamento et ornamento alto': The rhetoric of the pedestal c. 1430-1550

Research imperatives and process: This substantial article broached a very under-developed field by analysing the function, developing vocabularies and prominence of Renaissance pedestals, especially for bronze works, in order to gauge how they signified in overlapping civic, religious and social contexts. Analysing their essential mediating capacity between statue and viewer, the article uses surviving documentary, literary and, above all, visual evidence to address the physical and conceptual situation of sculpture on high pedestals with particular attention to changes in meaning and affect over time and ritual implications. As a contribution to the history of sculpture, the article transforms understanding of commissions to Donatello and Michelangelo as well as less obvious cases like the bronze candelabrum for the Santo, Padua with its mise-en- abyme of 'pagan' sacrifice, and the virtually unstudied 16th-century bronze pedestal designed for the ancient ‘Idolino’.