Art e Dossier

Thanks to the support of his close friend, Filippo Brunelleschi, after the success he achieved with the Cantoria, Luca could begin the monumental task of working on glazed terracotta. In the lunette that is situated above the door of the Sacristy of the Masses in the Florence cathedral. He worked in relief and created white figures embellished with “cold” gilding on a cobalt background. Around the figure of Christ giving his blessing he arranged the figures of the angels and sleeping soldiers dressed in “antique” armor according to strict criteria of compositional balance and harmony.

This was Luca’s first endeavor with full relief sculpture and was completed shortly before he made the two Angels for the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament in the Florence cathedral. It was a difficult task as regards both the considerable size that created problems in firing and transportation that was resolved by dismantling the piece and sectioning the figures with well concealed cuts. The two women are portrayed in composed, solemn poses while they fix their gaze on each other. The biblical episode of the meeting between the young Virgin Mary and the older Elizabeth was resolved in terms of lucid and sincere devotional inspiration: this feature also endeared the artist’s Virgin and Child to a large and varied public.

This is the lunette, above the door of the Sacristy of the Canons in the Florence cathedral, that was made to complement the Resurrection of 1442-1444. This composition is also arranged around the central figure of Christ inspired by one of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s works. Luca interpreted the scene in more descriptive and pictorial tones and introduced natural colors into the landscape, thus separating glazed terracotta from the traditions of marble sculpture.

This lunette is part of a series of works ordered from Andrea, Luca’s nephew, for Brunelleschi’s Spedale degli Innocenti, and before it went to the museum it crowned the altarpiece in the chapel Del Pugliese di Piero di Cosimo (1493). Andrea replaced his uncle’s classic, austere figures with a more colloquial and dynamic arrangement in strongly narrative tones, based on contemporary works by Antonio Rossellino, Verrocchio and Perugino. The educated Florentine clientele, that included even Lorenzo the Magnificent, especially liked the brilliant, luminous sheen of the glazed surfaces.

During the last decade of the century Andrea’s devotional rigor, fired by the preachings of Savonarola induced him to abandon the exuberant vivacity of his earlier works and to adopt an austere, simplified language. The compositions of chastely robed rigid figures with stereotyped faces, wrapped enjoyed an enormous success among the less educated people and were used mainly to decorate hospitals, shelters and churches belonging to the mendicant orders. Typical works from this periods are the seven medallions with Franciscan Saints in the Spedale di San Paolo dei Convalescenti that stands opposite the church of Santa Maria Novella.

This work marked Giovanni’s debut as an independent artist. The influence of his father, Andrea (evident in the group of the Virgin and Child with Two Angels) combines with new features changed by the poetics of Verrocchio and Filippino Lippi. The artist focused on decorative exuberance, in the joyful use of classical references (the candelabras and antiqued vases with dolphins along the pilaster strips and columns are original). He favored the pictorial effects of the material as we can see in the perspective river landscape in the central part of the architecture. His contribution was that of immediately strengthening the relationship between the plastic and the pictorial.

This work reveals a clear liking for Verrocchio’s style. It is part of a group of three lunettes that the artist was commissioned to make for the church of San Jacopo a Ripoli. Without any substantial variations the figures replicate the famous group Verrocchio made for one of the niches in the church of Orsanmichele (completed in 1483). Giovanni places the figures in an imaginative landscape that is enlivened by doves, rabbits and fawns. Explicit references to late fifteenth century Florentine painting, a sign of the artist’s predilection for increasingly graceful and pretty forms can be seen in the baptismal font in the church of San Giovanni Battista at Galatrona that dates from the same period.

Early in the second decade of the century Giovanni began distancing himself from the measured spatial rhythms of the altars his father made and adopted a “popular” or folk language that was rich in pietistic influences. In the Pietà that he made for the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Florence, he used elements from the familial lexicon enhancing them with pictorial and decorative effects. The figures project from the background that, along with the cross and symbols of the Passion, includes a broad landscape with Jerusalem in the distance. We cannot discount the hypothesis that three of the artist’s sons, Marco, Lucantonio and Simone «[who] showed great promise but died from the plague in the year 1527»; according to Vasari, also worked on this altarpiece.