DELLA ROBBIA, FAMILY. - LUCA. Sculptor and modeller, b. in Florence in 1400, d. there on 10 February 1482. In 1431 he began the cantoria of S. Maria del Fiore; between 1437 and 1439 he executed the five panels of Giotto's campanile representing Grammar, Dialectic, Poetry, Geometry and Arithmetic, and Music; in 1446 he was entrusted, together with Michelozzo and Maso di Bartolomeo, with the bronze door for the new sacristy of the Cathedral; in 1455 he made the tomb of Card. Federichi in S. Trinita.
The cantoria, considered his masterpiece, was intended to correspond to that of Donatello, from which it differs through a totally different conception. While in Donatello's cantoria movement and pictorial impressionism dominate in the jubilation of the putti and in the rich decoration enlivened by polychromy, in Luca's everything is inspired by a calm and serene vision of reality, and light and shadow firmly model the figures, placed not in a continuous and animated succession as in Donatello, but in architecturally delimited compartments.
Luca shows an equal love for plastic effect, order and clarity in the bronze door of the new sacristy of S. Maria del Fiore, which presents simple compositions arranged with careful symmetry. Luca's greater fame, however, is not based on his sculptures in marble and bronze, but on his terracottas, which he covered with a vitreous paste, effective in preserving their fragility and suited to conferring on them a pleasing decorative appearance through the use of few and brilliant colours, among which white and blue are fundamental. In these works, the fruit of the most exquisite sensibility, Luca affirmed, more than in his larger-scale works, the profound religiosity of his spirit.
Among the very numerous works of this kind we particularly recall: the tabernacle of S. Maria in Peretola (1441); the lunettes over the doors of the sacristies of S. Maria del Fiore (Resurrection and Ascension); the lunette of the Palazzo di Parte Guelfa in Florence; the lunette with the Madonna and Child among angels (Florence, Museo Nazionale); the Madonna delle Rose (ibid.); the fully round group of the Visitation (church of S. Giovanni fuor Civitas at Pistoia).
ANDREA. B. 23 October 1435, d. in 1525, nephew and adopted son of Luca, he worked exclusively in terracotta. He increasingly departed from Luca's refined simplicity, almost as if to compete with the painters of his time. Among his earliest and most sober works are the putti within roundels, placed on the exterior of the portico of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, designed by Brunelleschi, and the Annunciation in the sanctuary of La Verna; later Andrea's terracottas crowd with figures, become complicated with foreshortenings, present a more pronounced polychromy, so much so as to seem relief paintings. Such works, if by their greater richness of detail and colour they more readily strike the less discerning observers, lack the less showy but subtler charm of Luca's terracottas.
We recall the Nativity in the Museo Nazionale of Florence; the Crucifixion of the cathedral of Arezzo; the polyptych of S. Maria degli Angeli at Assisi. Nevertheless, in his later works Andrea seemed to recover a simpler and broader manner, as is seen in the Meeting of Sts. Dominic and Francis, in the loggia of S. Paolo in Florence, admirable for its sense of intimate religiosity.
GIOVANNI. B. in 1469, d. after 1529, son of Andrea, he went further along the path undertaken by his father, and arrived at unacceptable compromises between sculpture and painting by employing numerous tints, and often slipping into industrial art. His best works are the first six bas-reliefs from the left with the Works of Mercy in the frieze on the portico of the Ospedale del Ceppo at Pistoia, conceived by him and executed by Santi Buglioni, marked by a lively and genuine realism, and the firm and well-composed Virtues, placed within the niches in the same frieze. - See plate LXXXVI.
Bibliography6 works
Vincenzo Golzio