### DELLA ROBBIA, FAMILY
The Virgin between Sts Christina and George, by Andrea della Robbia. Lunette of the main portal. Bolsena, Church of St Christina.
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#### JACOPO DELLA ROBBIA (1435–1482)
The tormented line and intense expression of the figures clearly reveal a lingering Gothic influence. A similar Gothic predominance is still evident in the altarpiece in the Trenta Chapel in San Frediano, Lucca.
Jacopo’s greatest work is the decoration of the central door of San Petronio in Bologna, in which he adorned the two pilasters with reliefs depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments and the prophets. In the lunette is the full-round group of the Madonna and Child with St Petronio. In these sculptures Jacopo appears truly admirable in the broad and synthetic forms of the figures, in the energy of the relief, and in the absolute predominance of the human figure within its frame. It is no wonder that Michelangelo should have studied this work during his stay in Bologna. Jacopo also designed the baptismal font of San Giovanni in Siena, which is likewise adorned with a bronze bas-relief by him representing Zacharias driven from the Temple, executed with a grave and solemn manner.
Jacopo is also attributed the wooden statues of St Gabriel and the Annunciate in the cathedral of Montepulciano, certainly in his style and painted by Martino di Bartolomeo.
In 15th-century Tuscan sculpture, Jacopo della Robbia stands alone. To explain his singular art, one must connect it to the Gothic tradition, which nonetheless did not prevent him from grasping the intimate values of the new Renaissance currents, which in him seem rather to be strengthened by II. A subterranean sap, the atavistic tradition of Tuscan soil that goes back to Etruria, flows through his figures and animates them with a raw energy, sometimes tempered by austere sweetness, while the Gothic intensity of feeling infuses them with a vivid sense of dramatic spirituality.
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#### LUCA DELLA ROBBIA (1400–1482)
Sculptor and modeller, born in Florence in 1400, died there on 10 February 1482. In 1431 he began the cantoria of Santa Maria del Fiore; between 1437 and 1439 he executed the five panels on the Campanile di Giotto 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 Duomo; in 1455 he made the tomb of Cardinal Federichi in Santa Trinita.
The cantoria, considered his masterpiece, was intended to complement that of Donatello, from which it differs in a wholly different conception. While Donatello’s cantoria is dominated by movement and pictorial impressionism in the triple row of children and 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, which are placed not in a continuous and animated sequence as in Donatello, but in architecturally delimited compartments.
An equal love for plastic effect, order, and clarity is shown by Luca in the bronze door of the new sacristy of Santa Maria del Fiore, which presents simple compositions arranged with careful symmetry. Luca’s greater renown, however, rests not on his marble and bronze sculptures but on his terracottas, which he covered with a vitreous paste that preserved their fragility and gave them a pleasing decorative appearance through the use of a few bright colours, among which white and blue were fundamental. In these works, the fruit of the most refined sensitivity, Luca affirmed, more than in his larger works, the profound religiosity of his spirit.
Among the very numerous works of this kind, we may recall in particular: the tabernacle of Santa Maria in Peretola (1441); the lunettes over the doors of the sacristies of Santa Maria del Fiore (Resurrection and Ascension); the lunette of the Palazzo di Parte Guelfa in Florence; the lunette with the Madonna and Child between angels (Florence, Museo Nazionale); the Madonna of the Roses (ibid.); and the full-round group of the Visitation (church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia).
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Born on 23 October 1435, died in 1525, nephew and adopted son of Luca, he worked exclusively in terracotta. He gradually moved away from Luca’s refined simplicity, almost in rivalry with contemporary painters. Among his earliest and most restrained works are the busts within tondi 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; subsequently, Andrea’s terracottas become crowded with figures, complicated by foreshortenings, and display a more pronounced polychromy, so much so as to resemble painted reliefs. Such works, though they strike less discerning observers more forcibly by their greater wealth of detail and colour, lack the less apparent but more subtle charm of Luca’s terracottas.
We may recall the Nativity in the Museo Nazionale in Florence; the Crucifixion in the Duomo of Arezzo; and the polyptych of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi. In his later works, however, Andrea seems to have rediscovered a simpler and broader manner, as seen in the Meeting of Sts Dominic and Francis in the Loggia of San Paolo in Florence, remarkable for its sense of intimate religiosity.
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#### GIOVANNI DELLA ROBBIA (1460–after 1529)
Born in 1460, died after 1529, son of Andrea, he went further along the path taken by his father and arrived at unacceptable compromises between sculpture and painting, employing numerous colours 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 in Pistoia, designed and executed by Santi Buglioni, imbued with lively and straightforward realism, and the firm and well-composed Virtues placed within the niches in the same frieze. — See pl. LXXXVI.
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