Which museums have artworks of all four Ninja Turtles' namesakes?

Question

I was visiting the Louvre recently, where I tried to ignore the lines to Leonardo's Mona-Lisa and looked at all the other great art instead, such as Michelangelo's dying slave and the many works by Raphael on display. I somehow managed to miss or not notice Donatello's works in the huge museum, but I know that there are several of them as well. Nevertheless, this visit sparked the obvious silly question:

Which museums have artworks by all four ninja turtles?

Combined of course with my childish desire to visit all of them. The two I found so far are the two obvious places I've already been to:

The Louvre
The Vatican

Are there any others? The next obvious place to look might be Florence, but while there is a lot of each of them, the closest I could find was the Uffizi gallery, which seems to be missing Donatello.

Welcome to the site! What a fantastic question, even if somewhat silly :) — JonathanReez, Sep 17 '19 at 22:45
Not quite a single gallery or museum, but between the various galleries in the center of Florence, there are works by all of four of them. — Jack, Sep 17 '19 at 23:56
Hermitage in St Petersburg comes close, but no Donatello either — IMil, Sep 18 '19 at 01:56
@JonathanReez Sorry, but I don't think it's fantastic at all. It's way too broad and just inviting lists of possibilities. Stack Exchange doesn't do lists. — David Richerby, Sep 18 '19 at 10:15
@ViktorMellgren Paris has loads of rats. Maybe the Louvre counts? :D — JoErNanO, Sep 18 '19 at 13:36
@DavidRicherby Not true, Stack Exchange doesn't do unbounded lists with an unlimited number of equally-valid answers. It's spelled out in the FAQs and clarified many times on meta, e.g. here. This is clearly a bounded question where different answers can be better than others (unless you think there are an infinite number of museums that each have precisely one painting by each of the four artists) — user56reinstatemonica8, Sep 18 '19 at 15:10
This catalogue confirms that the Uffizi have nothing by Donatello. — Federico Poloni, Sep 18 '19 at 21:28
You are too late, Guggenheim Bilbao had an exhibition like that in 2004. — , Sep 19 '19 at 08:28
There was an artist known as "the Splinter" Giovanni di ser Giovanni Giudi theres one nicknamed shredder too, but cant remeber his name yet.. — GMasucci, Sep 19 '19 at 11:23
If a gallery doesn't have anything by Raphael, can we at least get half a point if it's got some Pre-Raphaelite artworks? — AJM, Sep 19 '19 at 14:55
@user568458: your first link does not say anything about lists... the second is about the definition of list questions, not why it is fine or not. — Taladris, Sep 19 '19 at 17:08
The only problem with lists is that I am a bit unsure, which answer to accept, since all of them are correct... — mlk, Sep 19 '19 at 18:47
Not quite what you're asking, and you already mentioned the Vatican, but there is one work at the Vatican that is believed to contain all four Ninja Turtles. — JLRishe, Sep 19 '19 at 19:13
@mlk, wait till someone combines all separate answers into a complete list, getting most or even all those museums in. Or write that answer yourself and self accept, that is also good manners here as long as you mention who helped with the information. — Willeke, Sep 20 '19 at 13:31
The Met and the Getty both have works by all four artists (though not necessarily on display), as does the V&A (albeit in reproduction) — Strawberry, Sep 20 '19 at 13:40

jkej · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-18T13:00:44.363

It seems that the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC has works by all four artists in their permanent collections, but for Michelangelo they may only have some simple drawings. I don't know if they are all on display though.

I came to this conclusion by using the website artsy.net. There you can look up individual artist and it will give a list of artworks by them, which can be sorted by institution. I did this for all four of them and there were several who had Leonardo, Michelangelo and Rapahel, but Donatello seemed to be the "bottleneck". Here is what I found for the National Gallery of Art:

All works by all artists are of course not listed on this website, so there may very well be other institutions that also have works by all four artists.

Update:

After reading @Pere's answer, I realized it might be possible to find information about which works are on display on the museum's website. Here is what I found:

Leonardo da Vinci: Two paintings are on display.
Michelangelo: Non of his drawings are on display. A sculpture by one of his followers is on display.
Raphael: Five paintings on display.
Donatello: Strangely, they don't list any original in their collection. The ones on arty.net are not listed at all. They have two copies and two works by followers on display.

So you probably cannot visit the museum and see originals by all four artists on display.

Interesting idea, but are there really only twelve Donatello works in existence? Or are the listings of artsy.net incomplete? (I honestly don't know enough about art to say which one is more likely.) — Michael Seifert, Sep 17 '19 at 21:04
@MichaelSeifert Yes, the listings are definitely incomplete. They also seem to be heavily biased towards the English-speaking world. So this should definitely not be seen as proof that there are no other institutions with works by all four artists. — jkej, Sep 18 '19 at 09:38
Yup, for example, no Van Gogh Ox-Cart painting according to artsy.net 8-/ An interesting resource, for sure, but far from comprehensive, seems like. — Italian Philosophers 4 Monica, Sep 19 '19 at 05:49

ex-user3761894 · Answer 2 · 2019-09-18T01:41:43.947

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The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has works for all 4 turtles in its catalog, in particular the Raphael cartoons. There are also some notebooks from Leonardo, and a drawing by Michelangelo (as well as a number of casts of his sculptures in the Cast Courts). I seem to have temporarily broken their search engine, but this page mentions having pieces by Donatello as well.

Edit: The Renaissance collection has a number of pieces by Donatello, e.g. this relief.

edited Sep 18 '19 at 01:41

answered Sep 18 '19 at 00:55

ex-user3761894

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For Donatello. I am not sure the Cast Courts count, only originals. – Patricia Shanahan Sep 18 '19 at 01:04
I've added a link to an original, I just couldn't get to it earlier while the site was down. – ex-user3761894 Sep 18 '19 at 01:42

score 18 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 16 '20 at 10:18

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The National Gallery in the UK lists paintings by all four 'turtles' in its Glossary. I don't know if all four are on display though.

-EDIT-

I saw Donatello listed in their glossary but yes as pointed out in the comments it might not be correct that his work is owned/displayed by them. I believe after more research he is mentioned as he inspired works by other artists (that they do own).

For a bonus snippet, while looking at this and depending on your definition of 'artwork by' the V&A in London has work by Raphael, Donatello Leonardo's notebooks and casts of work by Michelangelo.

Raphael—The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1515

Replicas of two earlier Davids by Donatello and a number of small scale bronzes.

A full-size replica of Michelangelo's David

edited Jun 16 '20 at 10:18

Community

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answered Sep 17 '19 at 11:51

Dustybin80

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Could you please add more details to this answer? Which paintings, where they can be found, etc. – JoErNanO Sep 18 '19 at 13:36
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Here are the National Gallery's listings for Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The website doesn't clearly say that the paintings listed are in its collection (but I guess this can be assumed) and whether they are on display (but it seems likely since they seem to be major works by major artists). Donatello is not listed, probably because he was a sculptor and the National Gallery only has paintings. – jkej Sep 18 '19 at 13:54
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A note on the Wikpedia page for the National Gallery says: "Sculptures and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings, and art of a later date is at Tate Modern. Some British art is in the National Gallery, but the National Collection of British Art is mainly in Tate Britain." So it seems unlikely that major works by all four artists could be found in any of these museums. – jkej Sep 18 '19 at 14:00

Pere · Answer 4 · 2019-09-18T21:40:35.467

According the incomplete data in Wikidata, the only museum with works by the four artists would be the Metropolitan Museum of Arts (still not mentioned in other answers). Donatello and Michelangello have one sculpture each that - judging by their photographs - are on display. One of Rafaello's work is a painting that is on view according to the museum web. Unfortunately, Leonardo's works are just sketches that don't seem to be on display.

Other museums have works of three of them: Albertina, Ermitage, Galleria degli Uffizi, Museu Boijmans Van Beuningen, Budapest Fine Arts Museum, Vatican Museums, National Gallery, and Victoria and Albert Museum. Since data are incomplete, those are likely candidates to have works of all four of them. In fact, some of them have been shown in other answers to have those works.

Note: I don't link a Wikidata query with global results because it took too long to execute and I had to resort to four different querys and mixing their outputs in R.

Great answer! The museum website confirms that the Michelangelo sculpture is on display. However, the Donatello sculpture doesn't seem to be on display anymore. They seem to have a copy of another Donatello piece on display though. None of the Leonardo da Vinci sketches seems to be on display. — jkej, Sep 18 '19 at 12:31

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 20 '19 at 13:17

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The Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence has all of them. Can't get an official link though.

answered Sep 20 '19 at 13:17

Rad80

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Their website's searchable catalog does not list any by Donatello. https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/search?query%5Bmatching_text%5D=Donatello – Carl Witthoft Sep 20 '19 at 15:44

Which museums have artworks of all four Ninja Turtles' namesakes?

Which museums have artworks by all four ninja turtles?

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