Il Verrocchio
(Andrea di Michele Cioni; Florence, 1435-Venice, 1488) Italian goldsmith, sculptor and painter.The celebrity of the Florentine artist Andrea del Verrocchio is mainly due to his sculptural work, which continued the naturalistic tradition begun by Donatello within a greater interest in the graceful and lightness of the pose.
Andrea Cioni, Verrocchio's real name, was born in Florence in 1435.Although his life is little known, it is known with certainty that he studied goldsmithing and painting with Giuliano Verrocchi (from whom he took his name) and Alesso Baldovinetti , respectively, and sculpture with Antonio Rossellino and, according to some authors, Donatello.
Although works from his early years are not preserved, he must have had considerable prestige, since in 1665 he created a sculpture workshop that also accepted painting and goldsmith commissions, and a year later, as a result of the Donatello's death, he became the favorite artist of the Medici family.His first important work was in fact the construction of the mausoleum of Juan and Pedro de Medici in the church of San Lorenzo, which he carried out in 1472 with a luxurious ornamentation of marble and bronze.
During the last years of his life Verrocchio developed an intense sculptural activity, among whose most notable achievements it is worth mentioning the monument to Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri in the Cathedral of Pistoia, the delicate Lady with the bouquet in marble and the group known as Christ and Saint Thomas .
Lady with the corsage (c.1478), by Andrea del Verrocchio
Two works inspired by models deserve separate mention by Donatello: a dreamy-looking bronze David executed before 1476 and the monumental bronze statue of the Venetian condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni on horseback, completed after his death by Alessandro Leopardi and erected in Venice in 1496, which, if it does not possess the tragic intensity of Donatello's Gattamelata , it constitutes with it, due to its extraordinary sensation of vitality and movement, the main equestrian monument of the Italian Renaissance.
His painting has less interest, although he had disciples of the stature of Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi and Leonardo da Vinci; his best-known painting, the Baptism of Christ (1474-1475), owes its fame largely to two figures of angels attributed to the hand of Leonardo.
Sculptural work
Like Antonio Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio trained as a goldsmith but, unlike the former, he soon changed his profession to devote himself fully to the sculpture.According to the authors, he is placed as an apprentice in Donatello's workshop or as a partner of Desiderio da Settignano at the Marsuppini monument, although it is most likely that he frequented the Rossellino brothers.In any case, he soon revealed himself as an artist of extraordinary technical versatility, which he was able to develop thanks to the protection of the Medici.He was at the head of a workshop in which both sculpture and painting work as well as armor or altarpieces were made.For several years the workshops of Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio maintained a rivalry that was highly fruitful for Florence in the last third of the century.
The first great work in Verrocchio's production, and one of the most audacious for its simplicity, is the tomb of John and Peter de Medici in San Lorenzo (1472).Instead of following the monumental models of his predecessors, reserved for members of the wealthy patrician families, he chose as a prototype the modest sarcophagi without figures intended for the less wealthy people.In the absence of ostentatious architectural structures or large sculptural groups, it is wisely combined materials that achieve beautiful ornamental effects: the marble sarcophagus with bronze foliage in the corners and with red porphyry sides (green for the medallions) rests on a marble platform that rests on two small turtles, and the whole is framed by a bronze grate.On the contrary, in the Forteguerri cenotaph, begun in 1477 for the Cathedral of Pistoia, Verrocchio conceived a wide display of figures that unfortunately he could not finish, and was mistreated with clumsy additions in the 16th and 18th centuries.
David (c.1473-75)
It famous is his bronze David (Bargello Museum, Florence), made between 1473 and 1475, slightly smaller than Donatello's.The representation of David as a young triumphant hero over the Philistine giant Goliath is a recurring motif in Renaissance art, perhaps because his figure was considered by artists to be very suitable to embody the new humanist values.The young shepherd is depicted with fine, elegant and somewhat androgynous features, while showing a haughty and disdainful expression, as if he was proud of having killed Goliath, whose severed head lies at his feet.
Cupid with dolphin
Previously (1470) I had cast the Cupid with dolphin ( 1478-1479, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), intended to crown a fountain in the Medicean villa of Careggi; He is a delightful child who presents a spiral movement with numerous profiles, preceding the serpentine figure (which rotates on its own axis and was imposed in the 17th century).
Eighteen years, from 1465 to 1483, it took to finish the group of Christ and Saint Thomas , also called Incredulity of Saint Thomas , for one of Orsanmichele's outer tabernacles, an impressive bronze full of contrasts, with chiaroscuro draping and oblique lines, which is one of his masterpieces.It would not be difficult to find in Donatello's repertoire the sculptures that have inspired these works, since Verrocchio always proposed to adapt the most famous themes of the master, for which he followed an intermediate path between the marked and sometimes hard line of this and the flat smoothness and subtle by Desiderio da Settignano.
Christ and Saint Thomas , by Verrocchio
The frontality and centrality that had Until then dominated the portrait bust, they were transformed by Verrocchio into a sculptural continuum in which the planes of the figure multiply and a new meaning arises from unusual character traits.The Lady with a Bouquet (c.1478, Museo del Bargello, Florence), with rich transparencies, includes for the first time the hands in a sculpture of these characteristics, and in the portrait of Giuliano de Medici (National Gallery of Art, Washington) contrasts the energetic relief of the armor with the face of the character, who lively directs his attention to a point out of the viewer's reach.
From From 1481-1488 he was commissioned in Venice to build the monument to the condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni, a grandiose equestrian statue for whose conception he started, like Donatello for his Gattamelata , from Marcus Aurelius ( 2nd century AD) from the Capitoline Museum.Verrocchio, as usual, gives another twist to the Donatellian exercise by increasing the size of the rider and giving him his characteristic turn on the torso, while trying to reproduce the movement of the steed by means of the unsurpassed plasticism of the musculature and the most extreme position.active legs, thus overcoming the somewhat static appearance of Gattamelata .
As when the author died in 1488 the monument had not yet been cast, the task was proposed to his student and heir, the painter Lorenzo di Credi, who rejected it; Alessandro Leopardi took charge of it in 1490.The final cold finish of this magnificent equestrian statue is not due, therefore, to Verrocchio, which does not prevent us from appreciating the magnitude of his conception.It is understandable that her most prominent disciple, Leonardo da Vinci, took her as a model for the Sforza monument, which unfortunately was never built.
Pictorial work
Andrea del Verrocchio acquired his pictorial training through Alesso Baldovinetti, from whom he inherited the concern for the tonal gradations of the landscape, although his pictorial concerns were more in line with those of Antonio Pollaiuolo in what refers to the study of anatomies and the execution by means of a hard and incisive drawing.It is true that Verrocchio provided some technical solutions and achieved new lighting effects, trying to give his figures greater plastic relief, which was certainly derived from his experience as a sculptor.
Baptism of Christ (c.1475)
His pictorial activity developed for ten years, between 1470 and 1480.The most significant work is the Baptism of Christ (Uffizi Gallery, Florence), made around 1475.Verrocchio apparently completed an unfinished painting, and one of his most gifted disciples, Leonardo da Vinci, painted the two infantile figures on the left.The bodies and clothing of Jesus Christ and Saint John the Baptist are powerfully worked, with a dry and almost metallic modeling barely tempered by some refined chiaroscuro.However, in the most sweet angel on the left holding the tunic of Christ and in the luminous and morbid landscape in the background, the intervention of the young Leonardo does seem to be detected.
Madonna with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Donato (c.1478)
More explicit is Verrocchio's style in the Virgin with Saint John the Baptist and San Donato (Pistoia Cathedral), an altarpiece made around 1478 that presents a composition of a simple width, a delicate landscape and splendidly modeled figures.Lorenzo di Credi (1459-1537), one of his students and main assistant for painting commissions, collaborated in this work.In this sense, it is not easy to elucidate which parts correspond to his hand of the two Madonnas attributed to him (National Gallery, London; Staatliche Museen, Berlin), since the fine modeling, which imitates the shine of bronze and accentuates the effect in relief, he was perfectly assimilated by his disciple.
Lorenzo di Credi painted in his youth important works such as Venus and an Annunciation (c.1485, Uffizi Gallery, Florence) or the Madonna with Child and Saint John the Child (c.1485, Borghese Gallery, Rome), based on the style of his master but eclectically fusing characteristics of Perugino or Botticelli.He was also interested in the refinement of Flemish art and Leonardesque naturalism, and from 1500 onwards he made almost exclusively impeccable and meticulous tables on sacred themes.The aforementioned Botticelli, Perugino and Leonardo were also students of Verrocchio, which gives an idea of their importance as a dynamic personality and binder of pictorial ferments in the later stage of the early Renaissance, trends that will consolidate and form the main lines of the Cinquecento .
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