Andrea del Verrocchio
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| Andrea del Verrocchio |
Tobias and the Angel Raphael (Panel 84 x 66 cm) (National Gallery, London) |
| Birth name | Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni |
| Born | c. 1435
Florence, Italy |
| Died | 1488
Venice, Italy |
| Field | Painting, Sculpture |
| Movement | Italian Renaissance |
| Works | Tobias and the Angel (painting)
The Baptism of Christ (painting - with Leonardo da Vinci)
Christ and St. Thomas (bronze)
Putto with a Dolphin (bronze)
David (bronze)
Equestrian sculpture of Bartolomeo Colleoni (bronze - cast by Leopardi) |
Andrea del Verrocchio (c. 1435–1488), born
Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, was an
Italian sculptor,
goldsmith and
painter who worked at the court of
Lorenzo de' Medici in
Florence in the early renaissance. His pupils included
Leonardo da Vinci,
Pietro Perugino and
Lorenzo di Credi. Few paintings are attributed to him with certainty. His greatest importance was as a sculptor and his last work, the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, is universally accepted as his masterpiece.
Life
Verrocchio was born in Florence in or about 1435. His father was Michele di Francesco Cioni, who worked as a tile and brick maker and, later, as a tax collector. Verrocchio never married, and had to provide financial support for some members of his family. He was at first apprenticed to a goldsmith. It has been suggested that he was later apprenticed to Donatello, but there is no evidence of this and Pope-Hennessy considers that it is contradicted by the style of his early works. Little is known about his life. His main works are dated in his last twenty years and his advancement owed much to the patronage of Piero de'Medici and his son Lorenzo. His workshop was in Florence where he was a member of the Guild of St Luke. Several great artists passed through his workshop as apprentices. As well as
Leonardo da Vinci and
Lorenzo di Credi these included
Domenico Ghirlandaio,
Francesco Botticini, and
Pietro Perugino. Their early works can be hard to distinguish from works by Verrocchio.
[1] At the end of his life he opened a new workshop in Venice where he was working on the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, leaving the Florentine workshop in charge of Lorenzo di Credi. He died in Venice in 1488.
[2]
[edit] Painting
Despite the importance of Verrocchio's workshop in the training of younger painters, very few paintings are universally recognised as his own work and there are many problems of attribution.
[3]
A small painting of the Madonna with seated child in tempera on panel (now in Staatlische Museeen, Gemaldegalerie in Berlin) is considered an early work of 1468/70.
[4]
A small painting on panel of Tobias setting out on his journey with the Archangel Raphael, carrying the fish with which he was to heal his father's blindness, was probably painted as a private devotional picture. It is an early work which has formerly been attributed to Pollaiuolo and other artists. Covi thinks that it was probably painted with assistance from Ghirlandaio. It is now in London at the National Gallery.
[5]
The
Baptism of Christ, now in the
Uffizi at Florence, was painted in 1474-75. In this work Verrocchio was assisted by
Leonardo da Vinci, then a youth and a member of his workshop, who painted the angel on the left and the part of the background above. According to
Vasari, Andrea resolved never to touch the brush again because Leonardo, his pupil, had far surpassed him, but later critics consider this story apocryphal.
The
Madonna enthroned with John the Baptist and St Donato is in the
Cathedral at Pistoia. It had been left unfinished and was completed by
Lorenzo di Credi when Verrochio was in Venice near the end of his life.
[edit] Sculpture
Around 1465 he is believed to have worked at the lavabo of the Old Sacristy in
San Lorenzo, Florence.
[6]
Between 1465 and 1467 he executed the funerary monument to
Cosimo de' Medici for the
crypt under the altar of the same church, and in 1472 he completed the monument to Piero and Giovanni de' Medici in the Old Sacristy.
In 1467 the Tribunale della Mercanzia, the judicial organ of the Guilds in Florence, commissioned from Verrocchio a bronze group portraying
Christ and St. Thomas for the centre tabernacle, which the Tribunale had recently purchased, on the east facade of
Orsanmichele to replace a statue of St Louis of Toulouse, which had been removed. He therefore had the problem of placing two statues (more than life size) in a tabernacle originally intended for one. As Covi says,the problem was resolved "in a most felicitous manner" The work was placed in position in 1483 and "has been acclaimed since the day of its unveiling and almost without exception recognised as an unsurpassed masterpiece."
[7]
In 1468 Verrocchio made a bronze candlestiick (1.57 metres high), now in the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, for the Signoria of Florence.
[8]
In the early 1470s he made a voyage to
Rome, while in 1474 he executed the
Forteguerri monument for the Cathedral of
Pistoia, which he left unfinished.
The bronze statue of
David, commissioned by Piero de'Medici, was purchased by the Signoria of Florence from his heirs Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in 1476 and is now at the
Bargello in Florence.
[9] Verrocchio's David is a young lad, modestly clad, contrasting with
Donatello's provocative
David. The Gothic-like, idealistic beauty of the features is closer in spirit to
Ghiberti than to the innovative Donatello.
[citation needed]
At a date unknown (suggestions range from 1465 to 1480: Pope-Hennessy said abouit 1470) he finished in bronze a Putto (winged boy) with Dolphin, originally intended for a fountain in the
Medici villa of Careggi and later brought to Florence for a fountain in the
Palazzo della Signoria by the
Grand Duke Cosimo de'Medici.
[10] This has since 1959 been kept in a room in the Palazzo Vecchio with a copy (by Bruno Bearzi) on the fountain.
[11]
The marble bust of a lady with a bunch of flowers (Dama col Mazzolino) in the Bargello at Florence is probably from the later 1470s. The identity of the lady is unknown.
[12]
The relief for the funerary monument of Francesca Tornabuoni for
Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome is now in the Bargello at Florence.
[edit] The statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni
Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio, cast by Leopardi
In 1475 the
Condottiero Colleoni, a former Captain General of the
Republic of Venice, died and by his will left a substantial part of his estate to the Republlic on condition that a statue of himself should be commissioned and set up in the
Piazza San Marco. In 1479 the Republic announced that it would accept the legacy, but that (as statues were not permitted in the Piazza) the statue would be placed in the open space in front of the
Scuola San Marco. A competition was arranged to enable a sculptor to be selected. Three sculptors competed for the contract, Verrocchio from Florence,
Alessandro Leopardi from Venice and Bartolomeo Vellano from Padua. Verrocchio made a wooden model of his proposed sculpture, while the others made models of wax and terracotta. The three models were exhibited in Venice in 1483 and the contract was awarded to Verrocchio. He then opened a workshop in Venice and made the final clay model which was ready to be cast in bronze, but he died in 1488, before this was done. He had asked that his pupil Lorenzo di Credi, who was then in charge of his workshop in Florence, should be entrusted with the finishing of the statue, but the Venetian state after considerable delay commissioned
Alessandro Leopardi to do this and the statue was eventually erected on a pedestal made by Leopardi in the Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, where it stands today.
[13]
Leopardi cast the bronze very successfully and the statue is universally admired, but Pope-Hennessy suggests that, if Verrocchio had been able to do this himself, he would have finished the head and other parts more smoothly and made it even better than it is.
[14] Although it was not placed where Colleoni had intended, Passavent emphasised how fine it looks in its actual position, writing that "the magnificent sense oif movement in this figure is shown to superb advantage in its present setting"
[15] and that, as sculpture, "it far surpasses anything the century had yet aspired to or thought possible".
[16] He points out that both man and horse are equally fine and together are inseparable parts of the sculpture.
Verrocchio is unlikely to have ever seen Colleoni and the statue is not a portrait of the man but of the idea of a strong and ruthless military commander "bursting with titanic power and energy".
[17] This is in contrast to Donatello's statue at Padua of the condottiere known as
Gattamelata with its "air of calm command" and all Verrocchio's effort "has been devoted to the rendering of movement and of a sense of strain and energy".
[18]
| Works by Verrochio |
| |
| Madonna with seated Child (Gemaldegalerie, Berlin) |
| |
| Madonna with John the Baptist & St Donatus (Pistoia Cathedral) completed by Lorenzo di Credi |
| |
' Madonna with Child , c. 1470, This is not by Verrocchio but a painting from his workshop. (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) |
| |
| Christ and St. Thomas (Or San Michele, Florence) |
| |
| Winged boy with Dolphin (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence) |
| |
| David (Bargello, Florence) |
| |
| The Condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni on horseback (modelled by Verrocchio, cast by Alessandro Leopardi and on the pedestal made by Leopardi) (Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo in Venice) |
|
- Covi, Dario A.: Andrea del Verrocchio: Life and Work (Florence 2005)
- Passavant, Gunter: Verrochio Sculptures Paintings & Drawings (Phaidon. London.1969)
- Pope-Hennessy, John: Italian Renaissance Sculpture (London 1958)
Taken from Wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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