Andrea del Verrocchio
Andrea del Verrocchio | |
---|---|
Born | Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni c. 1435 |
Died | 1488 | (aged 52–53)
Nationality | Italian |
Known for | Painting, sculpture |
Notable work | Tobias and the Angel (painting) The Baptism of Christ (painting) – with Leonardo da Vinci Christ and St. Thomas (bronze sculpture) Putto with a Dolfin (bronze sculpture) David (bronze sculpture) Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni (bronze sculpture – cast by Alessandro Leopardi) |
Movement | Italian Renaissance |
Andrea del Verrocchio (/vəˈroʊkioʊ/ və-ROH-kee-oh,[1][2] US also /-ˈrɔːk-/ -RAW-,[3] Italian: [anˈdrɛːa del verˈrɔkkjo]; born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni; c. 1435 – 1488) was an Italian sculptor, painter and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence.
He apparently became known as Verrocchio after the surname of his master, a goldsmith. Few paintings are attributed to him with certainty, but important painters were trained at his workshop. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi. His greatest importance was as a sculptor and his last work, the Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, is generally accepted as his masterpiece.
Life
Verrocchio was born in Florence in around 1435. His father, Michele di Francesco Cioni, initially worked as a tile and brick maker, then 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
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 Lorenzo de' Medici and his son Piero. His workshop was in Florence where he was a member of the
At the end of his life, Verrocchio opened a new workshop in Venice, where he was working on e the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, leaving the Florentine workshop in charge of Lorenzo di Credi. He died in Venice in 1488.[8]
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.[9]
A painting of the Madonna with seated child in
A painting in the National Gallery in London (cat. no.NG2508) of the Virgin and Child with two angels in tempera on panel, which had not previously been attributed to Verrocchio, was cleaned and restored about 2010 and is now attributed to him with a date of about 1467–1469.[4]
A small painting on panel of
The
The Madonna enthroned with John the Baptist and St Donato is in the Pistoia Cathedral. It had been left unfinished and was completed by Lorenzo di Credi when Verrocchio was in Venice near the end of his life.
Sculpture
Around 1465 Verrocchio is believed to have worked on the lavabo of the
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
In 1468 Verrocchio made a bronze candlestick (1.57 metres high), now in the
Also in 1468 he contracted to make a golden ball (palla) to be placed on top of the lantern of
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.[16]
A
At a date unknown (suggestions range from 1465 to 1480: Pope-Hennessy said about 1470) he finished in bronze a
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.[22]
The relief for the funerary monument of Francesca Tornabuoni for Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome is also now in the Bargello at Florence. Verrocchio had been at work in the Funerary Monument to Cardinal Niccolo Forteguerri, Pistoia, when he departed for Venice in 1483.
Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni
In 1475 the
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.[24] Although it was not placed where Colleoni had intended, Passavent emphasised how fine it looks in its actual position, writing that "the magnificent sense of movement in this figure is shown to superb advantage in its present setting"[25] and that, as sculpture, "it far surpasses anything the century had yet aspired to or thought possible".[26] 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".
References
- ^ "Verrocchio". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- ^ "Verrocchio". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- ^ "Verrocchio". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- ^ a b Syson & Dunkerton p. 378.
- ^ Passavent p. 45.
- ^ Becherucci, Luisa (1969). The Complete Work of Raphael. New York: Reynal and Co., William Morrow and Company. p. 11.
- ^ Kleinbub, Christian (6 November 2019). "Andrea del Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence".
- ^ For life see Passavent pp. 5–9. Pope-Hennessy p. 310.
- ^ Covi p. 174.
- ^ Passavent pp. 45–48.
- ^ Passavent pp. 48–51 & 188. Covi pp. 201–3.
- ^ The lavabo has not always been accepted as his work. Covi reviews at length the various attributions it has received, but he prefers to think it was executed by Verrocchio and his workshop in the period 1464–1469. (Covi pp. 50–56)
- ^ Covi pp. 71–87.
- ^ Covi pp. 56–60.
- ^ Covi pp. 63–9.
- ^ Cruttwell, Maud (1904). Verrocchio. Duckworth and Company. pp. 173–176.
- ^ Butterfield pp. 18–31.
- ^ Passavent pp. 173–4.
- ^ Good photographs can be found in the Web Gallery of Art at www.wga.hu/index1.html
- ^ Passavent pp. 174–6.
- ^ Passavent p. 174.
- ^ Passavent pp. 180–1.
- ^ Passavent pp. 62–3.
- ^ Pope-Hennessy pp. 65 & 315.
- ^ Passavent p. 65.
- ^ Passavent p. 62.
- ^ Passavent p. 64.
- ^ Peter & Linda Murray: Penguin Dictionary of Art & Artists under 'Verrocchio'
Further reading
- Brown, David Alan (2003). Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691114569
- Butterfield, Andrew (1997). The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio. New Haven: ISBN 9780300071948.
- Covi, Dario A. (2005). Andrea del Verrocchio: life and work. Florence: ISBN 9788822254207.
- Freiberg, Jack (2010): "Verrocchio's Putto and Medici Love". David A. Levine, & Jack Freiberg (Eds.), Medieval Renaissance Baroque: A Cat's Cradle for Marilyn Aronberg Lavin. New York: Italica Press, pp. 83–100.
- Passavant, Günter (1969). Verrocchio: sculptures, paintings and drawings. London: Phaidon.
- Pope-Hennessy, John: Italian Renaissance Sculpture (London 1958)
- Burlington MagazineVol.CLIII No.1299 (June 2011) pp. 368–378.
- Wivel, Matthias (22 July 2010). "Traces of Soul, Mind, and Body". The Metabunker. Archived from the original on 30 October 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
External links
- Biography at World Gallery of Art
- Andrea del Verrocchio in the "History of Art"
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Encyclopædia Britannica biography of Andrea del Verrocchio
- Andrea Verrocchio: 16th-century biography by Vasari A reprint of Vasari's biography.
- List of sites displaying Verrocchio's work
- Andrea del Verrocchio at the National Gallery of Art
- Leonardo da Vinci: anatomical drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, online exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Andrea del Verrocchio (see index)