Luca della Robbia - sculptor

Renaissance ‘genius’ famed for glazed terracotta

Della Robbia's Resurrection over the door of
the northern sacristy in the Florence duomo

Luca della Robbia, whose work saw him spoken of in the same breath as Donatello and Lorenzo Ghiberti among the great sculptors of the Renaissance, died on this day in 1482 in Florence.

Della Robbia worked in marble and bronze initially but enjoyed considerable success after inventing a process for making statuary and reliefs in terracotta decorated with a colourful mineral glaze.

Thought to be around 82 or 83 years old, he had shared the full details of the process only with his family. On his death, his nephew Andrea della Robbia inherited his workshop and other members of the family, notably his great-nephews Giovanni della Robbia and Girolamo della Robbia, continued to employ his methods with success into the 16th century.

Terracotta literally means cooked earth and Della Robbia’s technique involved the application of colourful glazes made using lead, tin and other minerals to the fired clay. 

Sculpting in terracotta was not new, having been invented in the ancient world, but Della Robbia’s idea to coat the terracotta with a glaze that fused with the clay below gave the surface a brightness and shine and made the sculpture particularly durable. 

Della Robbia decorated the dome of Brunelleschi's
Pazzi Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce

It took him many years to perfect his technique. The clay itself came from riverbeds, where Della Robbia would look for a light-colored, chalky variety of clay that bound particularly well with his glazes, cleaning and sifting it before adding soft river sand to achieve optimal consistency.  The blend of minerals in the glaze itself was a closely guarded secret.

The first commissions for which Della Robbia used the technique were in the Duomo of Florence, where between 1442 and 1445 he sculpted a lunette of the Resurrection over the door of the northern sacristy and a relief of the Ascension over the southern sacristy door.

He went on to execute many more works in the medium, of which some of the most important are the roundels of the Apostles in Filippo Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, the roof of Michelozzo’s Chapel of the Crucifix in the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte, Florence, and a lunette over the entrance of the Church of San Domenico at Urbino.

His final major work was an altarpiece in the Palazzo Vescovile at Pescia, a small town just over an hour from Florence, near Montecatini Terme.

Della Robbia's bust in the Pincio
Gardens in Rome

It was the Renaissance polymath Leon Battista Alberti who compared Della Robbia to fellow sculptors Donatello and Ghiberti, ranking him also alongside the architect Brunelleschi and the painter Masaccio in terms of their artistic genius. This assessment took into account more than just his work in glazed terracotta, although his use of bright colours gave his work in the medium a particular charm that was very popular.

In the early part of his career, Della Robbia, who may have trained as a goldsmith, worked with Ghiberti on the famous bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry - the so-called Gates of Paradise.

Brunelleschi often used him for sculpture on his buildings. His important commission was for the Cantoria - a singing gallery - in Florence's Duomo, for which he was probably chosen by the Medici family.  The project took seven years and his depictions in the 10 panels of children singing, dancing and making music, the figures lively and finely observed in the manner of Renaissance naturalism, established him as a major Florentine artist.

Della Robbia’s other important works in marble include a tabernacle carved for the Chapel of San Luca in the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, and the tomb of Benozzo Federighi, bishop of nearby Fiesole.

Florence's magnificent Duomo towers above
the skyline of Della Robbia's city

Travel tip:

The Florence Duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore - with its enormous dome by Filippo Brunelleschi and campanile by Giotto, is one of Italy's most recognisable and most photographed sights, towering above the city and the dominant feature of almost every cityscape. From groundbreaking to consecration, the project took 140 years to complete and involved a series of architects. Arnolfo di Cambio, who also designed the church of Santa Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio was the original architect engaged and it was to his template, essentially, that the others worked.  When he died in 1410, 14 years after the first stone was laid, he was succeeded by Giotto, who himself died in 1337, after which his assistant Andrea Pisano took up the project.  Pisano died in 1348, as the Black Death swept Europe, and a succession of architects followed, culminating in Brunelleschi, who won a competition - against Lorenzo Ghiberti - to build the dome, which remains the largest brick-built dome ever constructed.

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Piazzo Mino is the main square in the centre of
Fiesole, in the hills to the northeast of Florence

Travel tip:

Fiesole, a town of about 14,000 inhabitants situated in an elevated position about 8km (5 miles) northeast of Florence, has since the 14th century been a popular place to live for wealthy Florentines and even to this day remains the richest municipality in Florence.  Formerly an important Etruscan settlement, it was also a Roman town of note, of which the remains of a theatre and baths are still visible.  Fiesole's cathedral, built in the 11th century, is supposedly built over the site of the martyrdom of St. Romulus. In the middle ages, Fiesole was as powerful as Florence until it was conquered by the latter in 1125 after a series of wars.

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More reading:

Lorenzo Ghiberti and the 'Gates of Paradise'

Filippo Brunelleschi, the genius who designed the dome of the Florence duomo

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Florentine who made his mark in Rome

Also on this day:

1791: The birth of painter Francesco Hayez

1918: The death of Nobel Peace Prize winner Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

1941: The birth of author and politician Raffaele Lauro

1953: The founding of the giant oil and gas company ENI

1966: The birth of footballer Andrea Silenzi

(Picture credits: Resurrection by Sailko; Pazzi Chapel ceiling by Mattis; bust of della Robbia by Lalupa; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Bartolomeo Ammannati – sculptor and architect

Florentine artist created masterpieces for his home city

Bartolomeo Ammannati sculpted the
Fountain of Neptune in Florence

Bartolomeo Ammannati, whose buildings in Italy marked the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1511 at Settignano near Florence.

Ammannati began his career as a sculptor, carving statues in a number of Italian cities during the 1530s.

He trained first under Baccio Bandinelli and then under Jacopo Sansovino in Venice, working with him on the Library of St Mark, the Biblioteca Marciana, in the Piazzetta.

Pope Julius III called Ammannati to Rome in 1550 on the advice of architect and art historian Giorgio Vasari. Ammannati then worked with Vasari and Giacomo da Vignola on the Villa Giulia, which belonged to the Pope.

In the same year, Ammannati married the poet Laura Battiferri and they spent the early years of their marriage in Rome.

Cosimo I de' Medici brought Ammannati back to Florence in 1555, and it was where he was to spend the rest of his career.

His first job was to finish the Laurentian Library begun by Michelangelo. He interpreted a clay model sent to him by Michelangelo to produce the impressive staircase leading from the vestibule into the library.

The garden entrance of the Ammannati Courtyard at the
Palazzo Pitti in Florence

Ammannati’s masterpiece in Florence is considered to be the Pitti Palace, where he enlarged Filippo Brunelleschi’s basic structure and designed a courtyard and facade opening on to the Boboli Gardens.

His other major works in Florence are the Bridge of Santa Trinità over the Arno and the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria. It is believed the sculptor modelled Neptune’s face on that of Cosimo I de' Medici.

As he became older Ammannati was influenced by the philosophy of the Jesuits and turned away from sculpting nude statues in order to create more austere buildings.

Ammannati’s wife, Laura, died in 1589 and he attempted to have a final anthology of her poetry compiled, but he died in Florence in 1592 before it was completed. He left all his possessions to the Jesuits and was buried in the same church as his wife, the Church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi in the San Lorenzo district of Florence, which he had himself designed for the Jesuits.

The view from Piazza Desiderio in the centre of Settignano

Travel tip:

Settignano, where Ammannati was born, is a hilltop village northeast of Florence with wonderful views that have attracted tourists for years. Three other Renaissance sculptors were born there, Desiderio da Settignano, Bernardo Rossellino and Antonio Rossellino. The young Michelangelo lived there for a time with a sculptor and his wife in a farmhouse, which is now known as Villa Michelangelo. Mark Twain and his wife stayed in Settignano in the 1890s and the writer wrote that their villa had the ‘most charming view to be found on this planet.’ Gabriele D’Annunzio bought a villa on the outskirts of Settignano in 1898 to be nearer to his lover, Eleonora Duse, who was living there.

The Fountain of Neptune in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in
Piazza della Signoria

Travel tip:

The Fountain of Neptune in front of the Palazzo Vecchia in Piazza della Signoria in Florence is one of Ammannati’s most famous sculptures. Created in 1575, it features the Roman sea god Neptune surrounded by water nymphs and it was designed to commemorate Tuscan naval victories. The work was originally assigned to Baccio Bandinelli after Cosimo I de' Medici invited designs to be submitted in a competition, but Bandinelli died before he could start work and Ammannati was asked to complete the project.

More reading:

Filippo Bruneleschi - genius behind the dome of Florence Cathedral

How Benvenuto Cellini made his mark on Florence

The story of Michelangelo's David

Also on this day:

1943: The birth of singer and TV presenter Raffaella Carrà

1946: The birth of former England football manager Fabio Capello

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Filippo Brunelleschi – architect

Genius who designed the largest brick dome ever constructed

Brunelleschi's Dome dominates the Florence skyline

One of the founding fathers of the Renaissance, Filippo Brunelleschi, died on this day in 1446 in Florence.

He is remembered for developing a technique for linear perspective in art and for building the dome of Florence Cathedral.

However, his achievements also included sculpture, mathematics, engineering and ship design.

Brunelleschi was born in 1377 in Florence. According to his biographer, Antonio Manetti, and the historian Giorgio Vasari, his father was Brunellesco di Lippo, a notary. Filippo’s education would have equipped him to follow in his father’s footsteps but because he was artistically inclined he was enrolled in the silk merchants guild, which also included goldsmiths and metal workers, and he became a master goldsmith in 1398.

Luigi Pampaloni's 1838 statue of
Brunelleschi in Piazza Duomo

In 1401 he entered a competition to design a new set of bronze doors for the Baptistery in Florence. His entry and that of Lorenzo Ghiberti are the only two to have survived.

In the first few years of the 15th century, Brunelleschi and his friend, Donatello, visited Rome together to study the ancient ruins. It is believed they were the first to study the physical fabric of the ruins in any detail.

Brunelleschi’s first architectural commission was the Ospedale degli Innocenti, (Foundling Hospital) in Florence. It had a long loggia and impressive high arches. Later he used similar features in his designs for chapels in Florence.

In 1418 a competition was held for a design for the dome of the new cathedral in Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. The original designs made provision for a dome when building began in 1296 but no one had been able to work out how to construct one on such a scale. Again the two main competitors were Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, with Brunelleschi winning and receiving the commission.

The dome was to take up most of the rest of Brunelleschi’s life and its success has been attributed to his technical and mathematical genius. Hence it became known as Brunelleschi’s Dome.

The loggia is a feature of the Ospedale degli Innocenti

He used more than four million bricks in the construction and invented a new hoisting machine for raising the masonry to the dome, inspired by Roman machines used in the first century AD.

Away from his architectural work, Brunelleschi was also granted the first modern patent for his invention of a river transport vessel. In 1427, he built an enormous ship named Il Badalone to transport marble to Florence from Pisa up the Arno river. Unfortunately, the ship sank on its maiden voyage,

After Brunelleschi’s death, at the age of around 69, his body was placed in the crypt of the cathedral in Florence. Inside the entrance is his epitaph: ‘Both the magnificent dome of this famous church and many other devices invented by Filippo the architect, bear witness to his superb skill. Therefore, in tribute to his exceptional talents a grateful country that will always remember him buries him here in the soil below.’

Brunelleschi's Dome illuminated at night

Travel tip:

Brunelleschi’s Dome was finally put in place in 1436 and the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was consecrated by Pope Eugene IV on 25 March that year. The dome remained the largest in the world until others were constructed using new materials that had been developed for building in modern times. But Brunelleschi’s Dome, the first in history to be built without a wooden frame, is still the largest brick dome ever constructed.  The sculptor Luigi Pampaloni created a statue of Brunelleschi in about 1838, placing it in Piazza del Duomo in a position from which Brunelleschi appears to be looking up at his work.

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Travel tip:

The Ospedale degli Innocenti, literally Hospital of the Innocents, is a magnificent building that still stands in Florence. Brunelleschi was commissioned to design it in 1419 and it is now regarded as a notable example of early Italian Renaissance architecture. The loggia with its nine semi-circular arches faces on to Piazza Santissima Annunziata, a square that is not far from Galleria dell’Accademia, which houses Michelangelo’s sculpture of David.

More reading:

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - the Florentine who helped shape Rome

Why Carlo Maderno's facade of St Peter's attracted criticism

Antonio Palladio - the world's favourite architect

Also on this day: 

1452: The birth of Leonardo da Vinci

(Picture credits: Florence skyline by Rufus46; Ospedale degli Innocenti by Warburg; Dome at night by Petar Milosevic; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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