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Donner was one of the most prominent sculptors in Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century. Austrian by birth, he created much of his work in Pozsony where he was resident sculptor of the Archbishop Imre Esterházy. These sculptures had a decisive influence on the development of the arts in the baroque style in Hungary. He also exercised a powerful influence on the large number of German and Austrian sculptors studying at the academy, even those whose art was originally inspired by other sources.
The high altar of the Cathedral in Pozsony was a work of art in which the master realized a highly effective combination of architectural and sculptural elements. The crowned canopy rested on huge free-standing columns. The central statute represented St. Martin, the titular saint of the church who, dressed in the Hungarian national style and bearing the features of Esterházy, was shown bending down from his horse to share his cloak with a beggar seated on the ground. Two large subsidiary figures represented kneeling angels who provided as it were an intermediate link between the faithful and the saint. The high altar was dismantled in the course of the neo-Gothic reconstruction of the church in the nineteenth century. The St. Martin group can now be seen in the side-aisle of the Cathedral, while the two lead angels are in the Hungarian National Gallery.
The angels are truly representative of Donner's life-work. They illustrate in a vivid manner the sculptor's development - his gradual alienation from the theological requirements of the age and his transition from the baroque tradition to his own version of the neo-Classical style. Their sweeping, emphatic gestures are essentially symmetric, differential only in subtle ways. The quiet, closed outlines lead the eye to the shaded surface of the powerful forms. Though massive, the bodies are not clumsy. They kneel on the volutes with a fine, momentary touch, and bowed heads are coupled with an upward movement. All the statues on the high altar were cast in alloy of tin and lead - a material often used by Donner. The dull surface sheen prompted the artist to exploit the potentialities inherent in plastic values, free of all painterly effects.
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