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Luca Della Robbia
Italian, 1399/1400 - 1482
Luca della Robbia: Virgin and Child in a Niche; The… He was the son of Simone di Marco della Robbia, a member of the Arte della Lana, the wool-workers’ guild (see fig.). According to Vasari, Luca was apprenticed to the goldsmith Leonardo di Ser Giovanni and at about the age of 15 was taken to Rimini where he made bas-reliefs for Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta; however this information is partly contradicted by chronology. Gaurico also indicated that Luca was trained as a goldsmith, and it is possible that he worked on the Adriatic with a Florentine master such as Niccolò di Piero Lamberti, who went to Venice in 1416. It has also been suggested that he was apprenticed to Nanni di Banco, with whom he may have worked (c. 1420) on the decoration of the Porta della Mandorla in Florence Cathedral (Bellosi, 1981).
Luca is first documented in 1427, when he enrolled in the Arte della Lana and was mentioned as a collaborator of Lorenzo Ghiberti (see Ghilbert, (1)) on the east door of the Baptistery in Florence (see fig.). According to Antonio Billi, he also assisted on the earlier, north door. His work for the Baptistery, coupled with the fluid style and meticulous execution of his sculpture have convinced many writers, following Baldinucci, that he was trained by Ghiberti himself. In the late 1520s, during a period of strong interest in the art of Donatello, which was fundamental to his development, he may have executed the Bearded Prophet (Florence, Bargello) on a window of the east tribune of Florence Cathedral (Gentilini, 1992). Donatello’s influence is apparent in works executed c. 1430, including small schiacciato reliefs of the Virgin and Child with Two Angels (1429; Oxford, Ashmolean) and versions of the Virgin and Child with Six Angels (e.g. Detroit, MI, Inst. A.; New York, Met.; Paris, Louvre). He joined the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname (the stone and woodworkers’ guild) only in 1432, listed as a sculptor.
During the 1420s Luca became friendly with Filippo Brunelleschi who began using della Robbia works to decorate his buildings. According to Vespasiano da Bisticci, he frequented the home of the humanist Niccolò Niccoli with Brunelleschi, Donatello and Ghiberti. His association with learned circles in Florence is suggested also by his friendship with the writers Leon Battista Alberti and Antonio Manetti, and by the fact that his first patron was the banker Niccolò di Vieri de’ Medici, a close friend of Alberti and Niccoli.
According to Vasari, it was through Medici family influence that Luca, perhaps as early as 1428, received the important commission for the marble Singing Gallery (Cantoria) for the organ loft of Florence Cathedral. His first documented independent work, it was executed under the supervision of Brunelleschi, whose influence is evident in the structure, and was installed above the portal of the North Sacristy in 1438 (removed in 1688, now Florence, Mus. Opera Duomo). The Cantoria includes ten high-relief panels carved with groups of young musicians and dancers illustrating verses from psalm 150, which are inscribed on the cornices. The reliefs were carved between 1432 and 1437; in the earliest, the compositions are static and symmetrical, while the later ones are reminiscent of the lively dancing putti that Donatello was then carving for a second Singing Gallery (Florence, Mus. Opera Duomo) for the cathedral. The work included two gilt-bronze angels holding candelabra, identified with a pair in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris. These are sometimes attributed to Luca but were probably the work of a sculptor in Donatello’s circle. The Cantoria reveals Luca as a sculptor of extraordinary skill and maturity and, as Alberti wrote in 1436, one of the major figures of the Florentine artistic ‘rebirth’. Luca’s Cantoria is generally regarded as a masterpiece of Renaissance naturalism, achieved through a profound understanding of antique art, which Luca studied in Pisa and perhaps also in Rome.
The success of the Cantoria and the influence of Brunelleschi assured Luca a primary role in the decoration of Florence Cathedral: in 1434 he was invited to compete with Donatello to design a stone head (perhaps never realized) for the top of the dome. Between 1437 and 1439 he carved five marble hexagons of the Inventors of the Liberal Arts (Florence, Mus. Opera Duomo) for the campanile. He received a commission in 1437 for two marble altars with narrative scenes for the tribune of S Zanobi (formerly entrusted to Donatello); he executed only two reliefs of St Peter Freed from Prison and the Crucifixion of St Peter (Florence, Bargello), in which references to Masaccio are evident. Other important commissions included a funeral monument for Count Ugo of Tuscany (d 1001) for the Florentine Badia, an early project for a humanist tomb. In 1440 Luca prepared a terracotta model (untraced); the tomb was built to a design by Mino da Fiesole in 1481. For Brunelleschi he produced terracotta friezes for the Old Sacristy of S Lorenzo, Florence (see fig.), and for the interior and the portico of the Pazzi Chapel of Santa Croce, Florence.
Probably from the early 1420s, Luca also worked on sculpture in terracotta, a genre revived by Donatello and Ghiberti. He specialized in images of the Virgin and Child for private devotion, often reproducing them by casting (examples, London, V&A; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). His more ambitious terracotta statuary included the Virgin (c. 1435) of S Maria a Palaia, Pisa (Gentilini, 1992). Luca is celebrated as the inventor of tin-glazed terracotta, of which the first documented sculpture dates from 1441: decorations for a marble tabernacle executed by himself for S Egidio, Florence (now Florence, S Maria a Peretola). In this technique the terracotta is covered with vitreous glazes (blue and white or polychrome). The intense colours and the luminosity of the glazes enhance the expressive effects of the sculptural forms as well as the symbolic meaning of the images, and the glazes also protect the surface. Luca’s first monumental works in the technique were commissioned for Florence Cathedral: two large lunettes above the sacristy doors (Resurrection, 1442–4; Ascension, 1446–51) and two Angels Holding Candelabra (1448; chapel of S Zanobi). Other works in this technique produced in this period include the group of the Visitation (1448; Pistoia, S Giovanni Fuorcivitas) and numerous half-length reliefs of the Virgin and Child (Florence, Bargello; Paris, Mus. Jacquemart-André; Florence, Mus. Osp. Innocenti), some of which were reproduced by casting (examples in Tulsa, OK, Philbrook A. Cent.; New York, Met.; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.).
From the mid-15th century, Luca worked almost exclusively in tin-glazed terracotta , collaborating with his nephew (2) Andrea di Marco della Robbia. These works were rapidly successful throughout Europe, in part because of their moderate cost and ease of transport (they could be sent disassembled). In 1446 Luca was able to buy a large house with a garden in Via Guelfa, Florence, which until the 1520s included the workshop. One of the most important works in tin-glazed terracotta is the decoration of the Pazzi Chapel in Santa Croce (1445–c. 1470; see fig.), comprising 13 roundels with Apostles, some attributable to (2) Andrea della Robbia, four reliefs with the Evangelists (by another hand) and the ceiling of the small cupola in the portico. According to Vasari and Billi, Luca executed a tomb (untraced) in Naples, perhaps for Pedro de Aragon (bur. 1445). Other works for important Neapolitan, Spanish and Portuguese patrons are recorded, but these have not been identified.
In 1445 Luca formed a partnership with Michelozzo di Bartolomeo and Maso di Bartolommeo for the execution of the bronze doors of the North Sacristy of Florence Cathedral, formerly commissioned from Donatello. Completed in 1475, the doors have ten relief panels modelled by Luca in 1464–5, which show the archaizing tendencies of his late work. Other products of his collaboration with Michelozzo and Maso, which continued at least until 1451, include two painted terracotta Mourners (1445; Florence, SS Annunziata, Villani Chapel) and the tin-glazed terracotta lunette of the Virgin and Child with Saints (1450–51; Urbino, Pal. Ducale). Luca’s relationship with Michelozzo is attested by the patronage of Piero de’ Medici, who commissioned the maiolica decoration of the chapel of the Crocifisso in S Miniato al Monte, Florence (1448), glazed sculptures including the lunette of the Virgin and Child with Angels (Berlin, Bodemus.) for the chapel of the Castello del Trebbio, Florence, and decorations for his studiolo (c. 1450; destr. 1659) in the Medici Palace, from which remain 12 ceiling panels depicting the Labours of the Months (London, V&A) in white on a blue ground. This unusual technique was also used for the festive polychrome cornice of the otherwise austere tomb of Bishop Benozzo Federighi (1454–6; Florence, Santa Trìnita), Luca’s last marble sculpture.
In the following years Luca, in collaboration with Andrea, developed new uses for tin-glazed terracotta: the ceiling of the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal (Florence, S Miniato al Monte), with medallions showing the Cardinal Virtues (1461); altarpieces including the Capponi Virgin and Child with SS Blaise and James (Pescia, Pal. Vescovile); the tomb of Bishop Guillaume II Filastre (1463–9); and numerous stemmi (coats of arms) with fruit and flower garlands, for example of Jacopo Pazzi and Maddalena Serristori (c. 1465; Florence, Pal. Serristori) and of René d’Anjou (c. 1470; London, V&A).
The della Robbias’ art was soon taken up by other members of the Medici circle, including the humanist bishop Antonio degli Agli, who commissioned enamelled decoration for two apsidal aediculae in S Maria a Impruneta, Florence (1450–c. 1465) and Francesco Sassetti, who commissioned an enamelled altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with SS Cosmas and Damian for the Badia of Fiesole (1466; Florence, Misericordia).
In the works of his last ten years, Luca employed a more abstract and symbolic language based on the revival of Gothic elements, as seen in for example a Nativity (London, V&A), two lunettes (Florence, Pal. Parte Guelfa and Bargello), and a roundel of the Virgin and Child with Two Angels (Florence, Bargello).
Giancarlo Gentilini. "Robbia, della." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T072350pg1 (accessed April 12, 2012).
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