Luca Della Robbia

Medici patronage in quattrocento Florence plays a pivotal role in the aesthetic articu-lation of the analogy between horticulture and culture. As an acorn fortunately planted may grow to an oak tree, a seed of an idea properly cultivated may grow to wisdom. One may replant branches of ancient wisdom and see them resprout. As one cultivates vines of grapes in the countryside, one may also plant and cultivate learning in a studiolo. Humanist horticulture is most explicit in a no longer extant studiolo-an inner room of valuables in the Medici Palace, Via Larga, Florence. The horticultural decor of the ceiling of Piero de' Medici's study is early evidence of a taste for vegetative imagery and symbolism within the Medici dynasty.

This book explores the role of glazed terracotta sculpture in Renaissance Italy, from c. 1450 to the mid-1530s. In its brightness and intense colour glazed terracotta strongly attracted the viewer’s gaze. Its pure and radiant surfaces also had the power to raise the mind and soul of the faithful to contemplation of the divine. The quasi-magical process of firing earthenware coated with tin-based paste, promoted initially by imports from the East, was seized upon by Luca della Robbia, who realised that glazed terracotta was the ideal vehicle for the numinous. He began to create sculptures in the medium in the 1430s, and continued to produce them for the rest of his life. After Luca’s death, his nephew, Andrea della Robbia, inherited his workshop in Florence and continued to develop the medium, together with his sons. The book considers some of the large-scale altarpieces created by the Della Robbia family in parallel with a number of small-scale figures in glazed terracotta, mostly made by unidentified sculptors. The captivating illustrations integrate these two categories of glazed terracotta sculpture into the history of Italian Renaissance art. By focusing on a specific artistic medium which stimulated piety in both ecclesiastical and domestic contexts, this book offers new ways of thinking about the religious art of the Italian Renaissance. The links it establishes between lay devotion and the creation of religious images in glazed terracotta invite reassessment of habitual distinctions between private and public art.

Open Access: https://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484/M.HMSAH-EB.5.129108

This essay addresses the renewed controversy regarding Raphael Santi's initial training and introduces substantive evidence in support of the hypothesis that he received his first training from his father Giovanni Santi in Urbino. In addition to documentary and formal evidence, the young artist's strong attachment to his father's artistic practice on a more conceptional level is explored. Interests, including the use of geometric compositional formulas, witty devotional concetti, and above all his intense preoccupation with returning to the specific sources that engaged Giovanni Santi — for instance Quattrocento sculpture, first known through his father's inexact copies and subsequently through direct study of the sculptures themselves — illuminate the formal and intellectual foundations of Raphael's art.

A previously unpublished pax of remarkable beauty. This paper discusses a Virgin-Child motif with origins in the early-to-mid 15th century and its association with a copper relief applique known by independent examples and those featured on several paxes. The author here relates the Virgin-Child applique to Maso di Bartolomeo, a sculptor and bronze founder active in the circle of Donatello.  Also discussed is the development of workshop practices involved in the making of bronze paxes.

Seit der Wiedereröffnung des Bode-Museums im Jahr 2006 ist der von Wilhelm von Bode 1885 in Florenz angekaufte Madonnen-Altar von Andrea della Robbia wieder in der »Basilika« des Bode-Museums aufgestellt; das Werk zählt unzweifelhaft zu den bedeutendsten Werken aus glasierter Terrakotta in der Berliner Sammlung. Während der Florentiner Bankier und Medici-Gefolgsmann Francesco Sassetti als Auftraggeber seit langem identifiziert ist, war die exakte Provenienz des Altars bislang unbekannt. Im Folgenden wird, von der Klärung des ursprünglichen Aufstellungsortes des Altars ausgehend, eine Neubewertung seiner Gestaltung, Ikonographie und Funktion versucht. Die bereits von Bode vorgeschlagene und hier zu bestätigende Datierung auf ca. 1470 weist dem Berliner Altar in der Entwicklung der plastischen Altarbilder im Florenz des Quattrocento einen besonderen Platz zu.

In Biblioteca Marciana and Bibliothèque Nationale de France there are two manuscripts which thanks to the fifteenth-century inscriptions can be identified as once belonging to Luca della Robbia. We know very little about the artist’s biography and it is very tempting to view the books as an indication of his interests and perhaps as a source that informed his art. This article explores the possible impact of Jacopone da Todi’s Cantiche spirituali and Dante’s Vita nuova and Convivio on Luca della Robbia’s glazed terracotta devotional reliefs. The purity of his immaculate white glazes and the emphasis on the mystery of Incarnation and the Virgin’s central role in the history of salvation might have been nourished by those texts, which we know Luca had among his possessions. Moreover, the examination of the surviving manuscripts sheds a new light on the place of personal piety of the artist in his artistic practice. Considering the unparalleled popularity of Della Robbia’s devotional sculptures in Renaissance Italy it is important to evaluate to what extent this was linked to their evident technical supremacy or to their strong spiritual charge, informed by various texts.

Luca della Robbia entwickelte Ende der 1430er Jahre aus bekannten Glasurverfahren eine neuartige, für plastische Werke großen Maßstabs geeignete Technik, die seinen Terrakotta-Plastiken eine bis dahin in der Bildhauerkunst unbekannte Oberflächenwirkung (v.a. Glanz, Farbe, Haltbarkeit) verlieh. Seine bahnbrechende Erfindung entstand im Kontext zu Experimenten mit Oberflächengestaltungen in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts, wie sie u.a. in der Donatello- und der Desiderio-Werkstatt praktiziert wurden, ging aber über deren Resultate weit hinaus. Innerhalb von wenigen Jahren erhielt der schon vor seiner Erfindung hoch geachtete Luca della Robbia (vgl. Leon Battista Albertis Widmung in seinem Traktat Della pittura) eine Reihe prominenter Aufträge, die die sofortige Anerkennung des durch kein antikes Vorbild in seinem Status gerechtfertigtes Verfahren belegt. Die Innovation schützten die Della Robbia durch eine für die damalige Berufspraxis ungewöhnlich strenge Abschirmung der Werkstatt, die der Erfindung eine in jedem einzelnen Produkt wiedererkennbare Exklusivität sicherte. Gleichzeitig ermöglichte ihnen die Technik eine im Vergleich zu Marmor- und Bronze-Arbeiten größere Produktivität, ohne dass das Qualitätsniveau darunter litt.
Der Beitrag zur Sektion untersucht die sowohl von den Della Robbia als auch ihren Auftraggebern forcierte Codierung der Technik als individuelle, familiäre und lokale Innovation. Da zeitgenössische Textquellen zur Wirkung der ‚terracotte invetriate’ rar sind, sind Schlüsse zur zeitgenössischen Codierung der Erfindung vor allem aus den Objekten selbst sowie aus der Frage nach ihren Auftraggeber*innen und ihrem Status zu ziehen. In die Betrachtung ist auch die Weiterentwicklung der Technik in der zweiten Jahrhunderthälfte einzubeziehen, die den Ruf der Della Robbia-Werkstatt als innovative Produzentin anspruchsvoller Kunstwerke sicherte. Von Interesse ist eine solche Untersuchung vor allem vor dem Hintergrund ihrer Umcodierung in späterer Zeit, als Della-Robbia-Arbeiten vor allem als billige, seriell reproduzierte Substitute von Kunstwerken aus wertvolleren Materialien galten, denen jeder eigenständiger Kunstcharakter abzusprechen sei. Die Geschichte der Werkstatt und ihrer Erfindung wurde dementsprechend mit Hilfe eines genealogischen Modells von Aufstieg, Blüte und Verfall narrativiert. In der frühen Kunstgeschichtsschreibung schließlich fielen die ‚terracotte invetriate’ insgesamt unter das Verdikt ‚Kunstgewerbe’, wozu die Fixierung auf die ‚klassischen’ Materialien Bronze und Marmor beitrug, die dem billigen Ton lediglich eine dienende Rolle als Entwurfsmaterial zugestand.

In Biblioteca Marciana and Bibliotheque Nationale de France there are two manuscripts which thanks to the fifteenth-century inscriptions can be identified as once belonging to Luca della Robbia. We know very little about the artist’s biography and it is very tempting to view the books as an indication of his interests and perhaps as a source that informed his art. This article explores the possible impact of Jacopone da Todi’s Cantiche spirituali and Dante’s Vita nuova and Convivio on Luca della Robbia’s glazed terracotta devotional reliefs. The purity of his immaculate white glazes and the emphasis on the mystery of Incarnation and the Virgin’s central role in the history of salvation might have been nourished by those texts, which we know Luca had among his possessions. Moreover, the examination of the surviving manuscripts sheds a new light on the place of personal piety of the artist in his artistic practice. Considering the unparalleled popularity of Della Robbia’s devotional s...

La scultura nel secondo trentennio del 400 ✓ Nei primi decenni del 400 l'arte più sperimentale è la scultura (Donatello e Ghiberti). ✓ La generazione successiva ai grandi maestri conciliò il loro esempio aggiungendovi eleganza e virtuosismi tecnici. ✓ La nuova importanza riservata all'individuo riporta in auge la "moda" del ritratto autonomo, del busto-ritratto. Anche in questo caso la spinta iniziale venne da parte di Donatello (Busto di Giovane con cammeo; Reliquario di San Rossore). Luca della Robbia ✓ I suoi punti di riferimento sono Donatello e Brunelleschi, con il quale collabora spesso (= Cantoria, rilievi eleganti e composti). ✓ I suoi panneggi sono semplici, le espressioni varie, i chiaroscuri sono graduati con attenzione, il tratto è leggermente disegnativo, la tecnica è perfetta e precisa.

This dissertation presents a new history of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian glazed terracotta sculpture. Invented by Luca della Robbia in 1430s Florence, the medium even today remains synonymous with the Della Robbia name. Luca founded a prolific family workshop that continued to produce sculpture following his distinctive methods, and in some cases re-using his molds and other visual models. While most scholarship to date has focused on questions of attribution, this project instead investigates the artists’ methods for the codification and transmission of their distinctive technology and style, as well as the attractions that glazed terracotta held for Renaissance viewers. The Della Robbia remained the dominant practitioners of the medium for over a century, but they did not hold a monopoly: the dissertation, therefore, also considers the contemporary Buglioni workshop and other artists who contributed to collaborative projects.

Building upon recent work by conservators and materials scientists, the first chapter provides a comprehensive synthesis of the materials and techniques of glazed terracotta, in order to offer new insights into the development of the technology in the hands of Luca and his successors. Chapter 2 uses a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century written sources to explore how early modern Florentines conceived of and responded to sculptures in this new medium and the processes by which they were created. Through a close reading of Luca’s will and related litigation, Chapter 3 demonstrates that the sculptor considered the art in which he instructed his nephew, Andrea, to be a form of intangible property with real financial value. The second half of the chapter examines series of closely related sculptures in order to shed light on the materials and mechanisms that facilitated transmission of knowledge and consistency in design across generations. Chapter 4 explores the appeal of this visual consistency for contemporary viewers by studying a variety of instances where glazed terracotta was used to shape devotional experience and characterize sacred environments and objects. The fifth chapter examines the structure of the Della Robbia shop as it evolved over the last decades of its existence, demonstrating that collaborations were crucial to all stages of artistic production. Instead of attempting to discern each sculptor’s individual contribution to joint projects, my study considers the nature of these partnerships, together with early modern conceptions of authorship. The conclusion draws attention to the longstanding legacy of glazed terracotta sculpture across Europe and outlines possibilities for future research.

By locating the history of glazed terracotta within a broader narrative of Renaissance sculpture, one defined not by biographies but rather by technologies, this dissertation aims to highlight the coexistence and reciprocity of the exceptional and the everyday, of processes of invention and repetition, and of the individual artist and the workshop.

An article for the Minton Archive's online 'In Depth' project. September 2017.
At first glance, it is easy to dismiss the ostentatious design of Minton’s Ceramic Staircase (1865-7) at the Victoria and Albert Museum as something beyond the realms of our more muted, modern taste. However, the staircase was an important project that modernized and reflected the spirit of the world-renowned Italian sculpture collection within the South Kensington Museum (as the V&A was previously known) in order to raise the status of modern ceramic manufacture. This article considers the ways in which the staircase translated the industrious and decorative spirit of Italian terracotta sculpture to create an innovative design that would draw parallels between the great ceramic sculptors of the Quattrocento and their modern, British followers.

http://www.themintonarchive.org.uk/in-depth-the-ceramic-staircase/

My doctoral research contributed to the AHRC-funded Displaying Victorian Sculpture project at the Universities of York and Warwick and the Yale Centre for British Art. The project culminated in the 'Sculpture Victorious' exhibition of British sculpture at the YCBA and Tate Britain (2014).

In Britain, over the course of the nineteenth century, Luca della Robbia arose from the forgotten realms of early Italian sculpture to become known, in the words of John Pope-Hennessy, ‘the most popular sculptor of the fifteenth century’. At the same time, an initially ‘chromophobic’ and anti-Renaissance Ruskin, who, in 1845, had referred to Luca's polychrome reliefs as ‘signpost barbarisms’, gradually became so enamoured with the sculptor's work that, in 1880, he installed his very own della Robbia relief in the study at Brantwood. The della Robbia acquisitions at the South Kensington Museum in the 1850s, and the Ruskinian rhetoric used to describe them in the catalogues produced by curator John Charles Robinson, firmly reintroduced Luca into subsequent Victorian scholarship concerning the Italian Renaissance period. But to what extent did the South Kensington Museum contribute to both Luca's Victorian revival and Ruskin's change of heart?