Il David Del Verrocchio

A comprehensive survey of the work of this most influential Florentine artist and teacher Andrea del Verrocchio (c. 1435–1488) was one of the most versatile and inventive artists of the Italian Renaissance. He created art across media, from his spectacular sculptures and paintings to his work in goldsmithing, architecture, and engineering. His expressive, confident drawings provide a key point of contact between sculpture and painting. He led a vibrant workshop where he taught young artists who later became some of the greatest painters of the period, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, and Domenico Ghirlandaio. This beautifully illustrated book presents a comprehensive survey of Verrocchio's art, spanning his entire career and featuring some fifty sculptures, paintings, and drawings, in addition to works he created with his students. Through incisive scholarly essays, in-depth catalog entries, and breathtaking illustrations, this volume draws on the latest research in art history to show why Verrocchio was one of the most innovative and influential of all Florentine artists. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Andrea del Verrocchio was the preeminent sculptor in late fifteenth-century Florence and one of the leading artists in Renaissance Europe. In every genre of statuary, Verrocchio made formal and conceptual contributions of the greatest significance, and many of his sculptures, such as the Christ and St. Thomas and the Colleoni Monument, are among the masterpieces of Renaissance art. A favorite artist of Lorenzo de' Medici and the teacher of Leonardo da Vinci, Verrocchio was a key link between the innovations of the fifteenth century and the creations of the High Renaissance. This beautiful catalogue raisonné is the first comprehensive and detailed study of Verrocchio's extraordinary and innovative sculptures. Andrew Butterfield has combined careful visual analysis of the sculptures with groundbreaking research into their function, iconography, and historical context. In order to explain Verrocchio's contributions to the different genres of Renaissance sculpture, Butterfield provides new and important information on a broad range of issues such as the typology and social history of Florentine tombs, the theoretical problems in the production of perspectival reliefs, and the origins of the Figura serpentinata. Furthermore, Butterfield draws on a spectrum of often overlooked texts to elucidate fundamental iconographical problems, for example, the significance of David in quattrocento Florence. In its scope, depth, and clarity, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio will rank as one of the finest studies of an Italian sculptor ever published.

A visionary scientist, a supreme painter, a man of eccentricity and ambition: Leonardo da Vinci had many lives. Born from a fleeting affair between a country girl and a young notary, Leonardo was never legitimized by his father and received no formal education. While this freedom from the routine of rigid and codified learning may have served to stimulate his natural creativity, it also caused many years of suffering and an insatiable need to prove his own worth. It was a striving for glory and an obsessive thirst for knowledge that prompted Leonardo to seek the protection and favour of the most powerful figures of his day, from Lorenzo de’ Medici to Ludovico Sforza, from the French governors of Milan to the pope in Rome, where he could vie for renown with Michelangelo and Raphael. In this revelatory account, Antonio Forcellino draws on his expertise – both as historian and as restorer of some of the world’s greatest works of art – to give us a more detailed view of Leonardo than ever before. Through careful analyses of his paintings and compositional technique, down to the very materials used, Forcellino offers fresh insights into Leonardo’s artistic and intellectual development. He spans the great breadth of Leonardo’s genius, discussing his contributions to mechanics, optics, anatomy, geology and metallurgy, as well as providing acute psychological observations about the political dynamics and social contexts in which Leonardo worked. Forcellino sheds new light on a life all too often overshadowed and obscured by myth, providing us with a fresh perspective on the personality and motivations of one of the greatest geniuses of Western culture.

Through meticulously researched case studies, this book explores the materiality of terracotta sculpture in early modern Europe. Chapters present a broad geographical perspective showcasing examples of modelling, firing, painting, and gilding of clay in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. The volume considers known artworks by celebrated artists, such as Luca della Robbia, Andrea del Verrocchio, Filipe Hodart, or Hans Reichle, in parallel with several lesser-studied terracotta sculptures and tin-glazed earthenware made by anonymous artisans. This book challenges arbitrary distinctions into the fine art and the applied arts, that obscured the image of artistic production in the early modern world. The centrality of clay in the creative processes of artists working with two- and three-dimensional artefacts comes to the fore. The role of terracotta figures in religious practices, as well as processes of material substitutions or mimesis, confirm the medium’s significance for European visual and material culture in general. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance studies, and material culture.

Bringing together thirteen leading art historians, Beyond the Yellow Badge seeks to reframe the relationship between European visual culture and the many changing aspects of the Christian majority’s negative conceptions of Jews and Judaism during the Middle Ages and early modern periods.

Painters, draftsmen, goldsmiths, sculptors, and designers, the Pollaiuolo brothers of fifteenth-century Florence produced some of the most beautiful works of the Italian Renaissance.