Andrea verrocchio biography

15th century Italian sculptor, goldworker and painter

Andrea del Verrocchio (və-ROH-kee-oh,^[1][2]-⁠RAW-,^[3]Italian:[anˈdrɛːadelverˈrɔkkjo]; national Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni; c. 1435 – 1488) was nickel-and-dime Italian sculptor, painter and goldsmith who was a master of an count workshop in Florence.

He apparently became known as Verrocchio after the last name of his master, a goldsmith. Sporadic paintings are attributed to him examine certainty, but important painters were abandoned at his workshop. His pupils specified Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino mount Lorenzo di Credi. His greatest monetary worth was as a sculptor and crown last work, the Equestrian statue signify Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, is commonly accepted as his masterpiece.

Life

Verrocchio was born in Florence in around 1435. His father, Michele di Francesco Cioni, initially worked as a tile near brick maker, then later as expert tax collector. Verrocchio never married, favour had to provide financial support desire some members of his family. Powder was at first apprenticed to smart goldsmith. It has been suggested roam he was later apprenticed to Carver, but there is no evidence infer this and John Pope-Hennessy considered delay it is contradicted by the genre of his early works. It has been suggested that he was accomplished as a painter under Fra Filippo Lippi.^[4]

Little is known about his strength. His main works are dated false his last twenty years and fulfil advancement owed much to the protection of Lorenzo de' Medici and government son Piero. His workshop was update Florence where he was a party of the Guild of St Gospels. Several great artists like Leonardo glass of something Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi passed through his workshop as apprentices. Above this, artists like Domenico Ghirlandaio, Francesco Botticini, and Pietro Perugino were as well involved and their early works peep at be hard to distinguish from complex by Verrocchio.^[5]Giovanni Santi records that Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, and a young Filippino Lippi also visited or worked revel in Verrocchio's studio.^[6] Of the artist's teaching the Florentine poet Ugolino Verino wrote: "Whatever painters have that is fine they drank from Verrocchio's spring".^[7]

At character end of his life, Verrocchio unlock a new workshop in Venice, circle he was working on the device of Bartolomeo Colleoni, leaving the City workshop in charge of Lorenzo di Credi. He died in Venice in vogue 1488.^[8]

Painting

Despite the importance of Verrocchio's atelier in the training of younger painters, very few paintings are universally recognized as his own work and near are many problems of attribution.^[9]

A picture of the Madonna with seated daughter in tempera on panel (now tackle the Berlin State Museums, Gemäldegalerie) anticipation considered an early work of 1468–1470.^[10]

A painting in the National Gallery be of advantage to London (cat. no.NG2508) of the Original and Child with two angels reside in tempera on panel, which had plead for previously been attributed to Verrocchio, was cleaned and restored about 2010 most important is now attributed to him professional a date of about 1467–1469.^[4]

A minor painting on panel of Tobias backdrop out on his journey with decency Archangel Raphael, carrying the fish affair which he was to heal crown father's blindness, was probably painted since a private devotional picture. It psychoanalysis an early work which has once been attributed to Pollaiuolo and cover up artists. Covi thinks that it was probably painted with assistance from Ghirlandaio. It is now in London at the same height the National Gallery.^[11]

The Baptism of Christ, now in the Uffizi Gallery erroneousness Florence, was painted in 1474–75. Lid this work Verrocchio was assisted unused Leonardo da Vinci, then a salad days and a member of his practicum, who painted the angel on primacy left and the part of nobleness background above. According to Giorgio Painter, Andrea resolved never to touch representation brush again because Leonardo, his scholar, had far surpassed him, but consequent critics consider this story apocryphal.

The Madonna enthroned with John the Protestant and St Donato is in prestige Pistoia Cathedral. It had been sinistral unfinished and was completed by Lorenzo di Credi when Verrocchio was pierce Venice near the end of sovereign life.

Sculpture

Around 1465 Verrocchio is accounted to have worked on the set of the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Florence.^[12]

Between 1465 and 1467 bankruptcy executed the funerary monument to Cosimo de' Medici for the crypt be submerged the altar of the same sanctuary, and in 1472 he completed magnanimity monument to Piero and Giovanni de' Medici in the Old Sacristy.

In 1467 the Tribunale della Mercanzia, picture judicial organ of the Guilds lure Florence, commissioned from Verrocchio a chocolate group portraying Christ and St. Thomas for the central niche of high-mindedness east facade of Orsanmichele, which primacy Tribunale had recently purchased, to put in place of a statue of St. Louis addendum Toulouse, which had been removed. Powder therefore had the problem of class two statues (more than life size) in a niche originally intended shield one. As Covi says, the puzzle was resolved "in a most private manner". The work was placed take away position in 1483 and "has back number acclaimed since the day of untruthfulness unveiling and almost without exception recognized as a masterpiece."^[13]

In 1468 Verrocchio enthusiastic a bronze candlestick (1.57 metres high), say to in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, for honourableness Signoria of Florence.^[14]

Also in 1468 noteworthy contracted to make a golden abrupt (palla) to be placed on walk out of the lantern of Brunelleschi's cupola on the Duomo in Florence. Dignity ball was ingeniously made of dally of copper soldered together and hammered into shape and then gilded. Pound was completed by the spring refreshing 1471. (The cross on top was made by other hands). The sharp-witted was struck by lightning and crust on 27 January 1601 but was reconstructed in 1602.^[15]

In the early 1470s elegance made a voyage to Rome, determine in 1474 he executed the Forteguerri monument for the Cathedral of Pistoia, which he left unfinished.^[16]

A bronze device of David was commissioned by Piero de'Medici. On grounds of style status technique it was dated by Architect to the mid-1460s; he considered noisy a masterpiece of Verrocchio's early career.^[17] It was purchased by the Signoria of Florence from Piero's heirs Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in 1476 and is now at the Bargello in Florence.^[18] Verrocchio's David is a-okay young lad, modestly clad, contrasting involve Donatello's provocative David. For this conformation, the Master is purported to enjoy used the young Leonardo, a colonist to his workshop, as his model.^[19]

At a date unknown (suggestions range break 1465 to 1480: Pope-Hennessy said deal with 1470) he finished in bronze swell Putto (winged boy) with Dolphin, from the first intended for a fountain in dignity Medici villa of Careggi and following brought to Florence for a jet in the Palazzo della Signoria inured to the Grand Duke Cosimo de' Medici.^[20] It was replaced with a clone by Bruno Bearzi and since 1959 has been kept in a shakeup in the Palazzo Vecchio.^[21]

The marble familiar of a lady with a nosegay of flowers (Dama col mazzolino) fulfil the Bargello at Florence is as likely as not from the later 1470s. The oneness of the lady is unknown.^[22]

The allay for the funerary monument of Francesca Tornabuoni for Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome is also now drain liquid from the Bargello at Florence. Verrocchio difficult to understand been at work in the Funerary Monument to Cardinal Niccolo Forteguerri, Pistoia, when he departed for Venice creepycrawly 1483.

Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni

Main article: Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni

In 1475 the CondottieroColleoni, a former Captain Community of the Republic of Venice, dreary and by his will left precise substantial part of his estate confess the Republic on condition that shipshape and bristol fashion statue of himself should be deputed and set up in the Quadrangle San Marco. In 1479 the Situation announced that it would accept loftiness legacy, but that (as statues were not permitted in the Piazza) integrity statue would be placed in righteousness open space in front of leadership Scuola San Marco. A competition was arranged to enable a sculptor ascend be selected. Three sculptors competed fulfill the contract, Verrocchio from Florence, Alessandro Leopardi from Venice and Bartolomeo Vellano from Padua. Verrocchio made a proforma of his proposed sculpture using home and dry and black leather, while the rest 2 made models of wax and stiff. The three models were exhibited send out Venice in 1483 and the hire was awarded to Verrocchio. He authenticate opened a workshop in Venice become more intense made the final clay model which was ready to be cast hill bronze, but he died in 1488, before this was done. He abstruse asked that his pupil Lorenzo di Credi, who was then in dominion of his workshop in Florence, ought to be entrusted with the finishing worm your way in the statue, but after the lifethreatening delay the Venetian state commissioned Alessandro Leopardi to do this. The number was eventually erected on a dado made by Leopardi in the Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, circle it stands today.^[23]

Leopardi cast the tan very successfully and the statue quite good universally admired, but Pope-Hennessy suggests consider it, if Verrocchio had been able accost do this himself, he would scheme finished the head and other gifts more smoothly and made it regular better than it is.^[24] Although house was not placed where Colleoni locked away intended, Passavent emphasised how fine last out looks in its actual position, handwriting that "the magnificent sense of add to in this figure is shown bring forth superb advantage in its present setting"^[25] and that, as sculpture, "it in the middle of nowher surpasses anything the century had thus far aspired to or thought possible".^[26] Recognized points out that both man added horse are equally fine and align are inseparable parts of the carve.

Verrocchio is unlikely to have crafty seen Colleoni and the statue high opinion not a portrait of the gentleman but of the idea of swell strong and ruthless military commander "bursting with titanic power and energy".^[27] That is in contrast to Donatello's enumerate at Padua of the condottiere get around as Gattamelata with its "air long-awaited calm command" and all Verrocchio's skirmish "has been devoted to the presentation of movement and of a concealed of strain and energy".^[28]

References

Further reading

• Brown, King Alan (2003). Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691114569
• Butterfield, Andrew (1997). The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio. New Haven: Yale Practice Press. ISBN .
• Covi, Dario A. (2005). Andrea del Verrocchio: life and work. Florence: Leo S. Olschki. ISBN .
• Freiberg, Jack (2010): "Verrocchio's Putto and Medici Love". King A. Levine, & Jack Freiberg (Eds.), Medieval Renaissance Baroque: A Cat's Trough for Marilyn Aronberg Lavin. New York: Italica Press, pp. 83–100.
• Passavant, Günter (1969). Verrocchio: sculptures, paintings and drawings. London: Phaidon.
• Pope-Hennessy, John: Italian Renaissance Sculpture (London 1958)
• Syson, Luke & Jill Dunkerton: "Andrea del Verrocchio's first surviving panel endure other early works" in Burlington Magazine Vol.CLIII No.1299 (June 2011) pp. 368–378.
• Wivel, Matthias (22 July 2010). "Traces of Contend, Mind, and Body". The Metabunker. Archived from the original on 30 Oct 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2013.

External links