DELLA ROBBIA, FAMIGLIA. — LUCA. Sculptor and modeller, born in Florence in 1400, died 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 bell tower representing Grammar, Dialectic, Poetry, Geometry and Arithmetic, and Music; in 1446, together with Michelozzo and Maso di Bartolomeo, he was entrusted with the bronze door for the new sacristy of the Duomo; in 1455 he made the tomb of Cardinal Federighi in S. Trinita.
The cantoria, considered his masterpiece, was intended to correspond to Donatello’s, from which it differs through an entirely different conception. While movement and pictorial impressionism dominate in Donatello’s cantoria, in the rejoicing of the putti and the rich decoration enlivened by polychromy, everything in Luca’s is inspired by a calm and serene vision of reality; light and shadow firmly model the figures, placed not in a continuous and animated succession, as in Donatello, but in architecturally delimited compartments.
Luca displays an equal love of 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, rests not on his marble and bronze sculptures, but on his terracottas, which he covered with a vitreous paste, capable of preserving their fragility and suited to giving them a pleasing decorative appearance through the use of a few brilliant colours, among which white and blue were fundamental. In these works, the fruit of the most refined sensibility, Luca expressed the profound religiousness of his spirit more than in his larger works.
Among the very numerous works of this kind, we especially recall: the tabernacle of S. Maria in Peretola (1441); the lunettes above the doors of the sacristies of S. Maria del Fiore (Resurrection and Ascension); the lunette of the palace of the Guelph Party in Florence; the lunette with the Madonna and Child among the angels (Florence, National Museum); the Madonna delle Rose (there); the fully sculpted group of the Visitation (church of S. Giovanni fuor Civitas in Pistoia).
ANDREA. Born on 23 October 1435, died in 1525, Luca’s nephew and adopted son, he worked exclusively in terracotta. He increasingly moved away from Luca’s refined simplicity, almost as if to compete with his contemporary painters. Among his oldest and most restrained 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 became crowded with figures, grew more complex through foreshortenings, and displayed more pronounced polychromy, so much so that they seem like paintings in relief. These works, although their greater wealth of detail and colour more readily impresses less discerning observers, lack the less conspicuous but subtler enchantment of Luca’s terracottas.
We recall the Nativity in the National Museum of Florence; the Crucifixion in the cathedral of Arezzo; the altarpiece of S. Maria degli Angeli in Assisi. In his later works, however, Andrea seemed to recover a simpler and broader manner, as seen in the Meeting of ss. Dominic and Francis, in the loggia of S. Paolo in Florence, admirable for its sense of intimate religiousness.
GIOVANNI. Born in 1469, died after 1529, Andrea’s son, he went still further along the path undertaken by his father and arrived at unacceptable compromises between sculpture and painting, employing numerous colours and often slipping into industrial art. His finest 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 by him and executed by Santi Buglioni, marked by lively and genuine realism, and the sturdy, well-composed Virtues, placed within niches in the same frieze. — Vedi tav. LXXXVI.