VERROCCHIO, ANDREA di MICHELE di FRANCESCO de' CIONI, detto il. — Painter, sculptor, and goldsmith, b. in Florence in 1436 and d. in Venice on 7 October 1488. He was called V. because, as a young man, he worked in the workshop of the goldsmith Giuliano Verrocchi.
A pupil of Alessio Baldovinetti, he was influenced by Pesellino and later also by his collaborators, Ghirlandaio and Perugino (Barenson). As a sculptor, according to tradition, he derived from Donatello, but there is no connection between the two artists except an external one. The fact that V. Lavabo, left unfinished by Donatello in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo, and took his place with the Medici, has purely historical value.
He is undoubtedly closer to Ghiberti and Desiderio da Settignano. On the other hand, his training and the attribution
of his own works remain an open problem, despite the numerous studies that criticism has devoted to him. The definition of a leading personality such as this is made more complex by the proximity of Leonardo, who in 1470, at the age of 17, entered V.’s workshop, precisely during the period when V., who was above all a sculptor, devoted himself to painting; until that time, in fact, documents cite him as a “schalpellatore,” goldsmith, and carver. The oldest tradition speaks of the young Leonardo’s collaboration on the famous painting of the Baptism of Jesus for the church of S. Salvi, now in the Uffizi, and even today criticism is not agreed on the extent of this collaboration. Among his other paintings, mention should be made of a Madonna with the Child in the Kaiser Friederich Museum in Berlin, later than the Baptism, and the altarpiece of Pistoia cathedral, a workshop production painted largely by Lorenzo di Credi. His first work in sculpture dates from 1467, the year in which V. began the group with Christ and St. Thomas, in the Mercanzia tabernacle (executed by Donatello in Orsanmichele); the work was completed in 1483. From 1472 dates the tomb of Piero de' Medici in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo, of refined chromatic elegance and greatly admired even in its own time (Vasari). Probably also from the same year is the bronze David (now in the Museo nazionale), transferred to the Signoria in 1476 by Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, to be placed in the Palazzo Vecchio, where instead there is now, adorning the courtyard fountain, the Winged Putto with the Fish, executed shortly after 1469 for the villa at Careggi. In 1477 V. worked on the tomb of Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni, of which two bas-reliefs that adorned the front of the sarcophagus (Florence, Museo nazionale) and four Virtues (Paris, J. André collection) remain; these are singular works for their sincere and passionate adherence to reality, expressed outside the classical canons, with a new violence. The Beheading of St. John the Baptist for the frontal of the Florence Baptistery dates from 1480. The following are preserved in the Museo nazionale of Florence: the Madonna of S. Maria Novella (terracotta), another Madonna in marble, and the bust of the Lady known as delle mammole, which many attribute to Leonardo, especially because of the sensitive, beautiful hands. After 1477 V. began work on the monument to Cardinal Fortu-guerri at Pistoia, later interrupted when V. was commissioned by the Republic of Venice to create the monument to Colleoni. In 1481 V. went to Venice, taking with him the “rag” model of the horse, which he destroyed in indignation when he learned that La Serenissima had decreed that Bellano execute the figure of the condottiero. But in 1481 he resumed work in Venice, leaving all his affairs in Florence in the care of his pupil Lorenzo di Credi. When he died, the Republic entrusted Alessandro Leopardi with the task of casting the work. An expert bronze-caster with strong tendencies toward decoration, Leopardi wished to bard the steed as if for a tournament, thinking that this would give it greater solemnity. Drawings by V. are in the Uffizi, the Louvre, the British Museum, Oxford, and the Cabinet of Drawings of the Kaiser Friederich Museum in Berlin. Works of uncertain attribution and workshop productions are in the aforementioned Museum in Berlin (Madonna), in Frankfurt, and in the National Gallery in London (Madonna, recognized by Berenson as certainly his painting). Of his goldsmith’s work, only the silver relief of the altarpiece of St. John the Baptist in the Opera del duomo of Florence remains (1472). — Vedi tav. CXXXV.