Sculpture
Donatello left Florence for Padua in
1443.
His ten-year absence had an effect similar to that of
Brunelleschi's death, but whereas Alberti took Brunelleschi's place in
architecture, there was no young sculptor of comparable stature to take
Donatello's. As a consequence, the other sculptors remaining in the city
gained greater prominence. The new talents who grew up under their
influence brought about the changes between 1443
and 1453
that Donatello must have
seen with dismay when he returned to Florence.
Luca Della Robbia
Ghiberti aside, the only significant sculptor in Florence after
Donatello left was
Luca Della Robbia
(1400-1482).
He had made his reputation in the 1430s with the marble
reliefs of the Cantoria (singers' pulpit) in the
Cathedral. The
Trumpet Players panel reproduced here (fig.
614) shows the beguiling
mixture of sweetness and gravity characteristic of all of Luca's work
but leavened here by an unusual note of exuberance. Its style has very
little to do with Donatello. Instead, it recalls the classicism of Nanni
di Banco (see fig.
566), with whom Luca may
have worked as a youth. We also sense a touch of Ghiberti here and
there, as well as the powerful influence of classicistic Roman reliefs
(such as
fig. 271).
Unfortunately, Luca lacked a capacity for growth, despite his great
gifts. So far as we know, he never did a free-standing statue, and the
Cantoria
remained his most ambitious achievement.

Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria. 1431-38, Marble, 328 x 560 cm. Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo, Florence

614.
Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: first top relief Trumpet Players.
ń. 1431-38.
Marble,
103 x
93.5 cm. Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: second top relief. 1431-38. Marble, 100 x 94 cm. Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: third top relief. 1431-38. Marble, 100 x 94 cm. Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: fourth top relief. 1431-38. Marble, 100 x 94 cm. Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: first bottom relief. 1431-38. Marble, 99 x 92 cm. Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: second bottom relief. 1431-38. Marble, 99 x 92 cm. Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: left side relief. 1431-38. Marble, 96 x 61 cm. Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
Luca Della Robbia.
Cantoria: right side relief. 1431-38. Marble, 96 x 61 cm. Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
For the rest of his long career, he devoted himself almost
exclusively to sculpture in terracotta, a cheaper and less demanding
medium than marble, which he covered with enamellike glazes to mask its
surface and make it impervious to weather. His finest works in this
technique, such as The Resurrection in figure
615, have the dignity and charm of the
Cantona panels. The white glaze creates the impression of marble,
with a deep blue for the background of the lunette. Other colors were
confined almost entirely to the decorative framework of Luca's reliefs.
This restraint, however, lasted only while he was in active charge of
his workshop. Later, the quality of the modeling deteriorated and the
simple harmony of white and blue often gave way to an assortment of more
vivid hues. At the end of the century, the della Robbia shop had become
a factory, turning out small Madonna panels and garish altarpieces for
village churches by the score.
Because of Luca's almost complete withdrawal from the domain of
carving, there was a real shortage of capable marble sculptors in the
Florence of the 1440s. By the time Donatello returned, this gap had been
filled by a group of men, most of them still in their twenties, from the
little hill towns to the north and east of Florence that had long
supplied the city with stonemasons and carvers. Now, because the
exceptional circumstances gave them special opportunities, the most
gifted of them developed into artists of considerable importance.

Luca Della Robbia.
North Sacristy Doors with the Resurrection. 1442-75. Enameled terracotta
and bronze. Duomo, Florence
615.
Luca Della Robbia.
The Resurrection. 1442-45. Glazed terracotta,
160 x
222.2 cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

Luca Della Robbia.
Bronze Doors of the New Sacristy. 1446-75. Duomo, Florence

Luca Della Robbia.
Bronze Doors of the New Sacristy. 1446-75. Duomo, Florence
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Luca della Robbia
Luca della Robbia, in full Luca di Simone di Marco della
Robbia (born 1399/1400, Florence [Italy]—died Feb. 10,
1482), sculptor, one of the pioneers of Florentine
Renaissance style, who was the founder of a family studio
primarily associated with the production of works in
enameled terra-cotta.
Before developing the process with which
his family name came to be associated, Luca apparently
practiced his art solely in marble. In 1431 he began what is
probably his most important work, the cantoria, or “singing
gallery,” that was originally over the door of the northern
sacristy of the Cathedral of Florence. Taken down in 1688
and reassembled in the Opera del Duomo Museum, it consists
of 10 figurated reliefs: two groups of singing boys;
trumpeters; choral dancers; and children playing on various
musical instruments. The panels owe their great popularity
to the innocence and naturalism with which the children are
portrayed. The most important of Luca’s other works in
marble are a tabernacle carved for the Chapel of San Luca in
the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence (1441; now at
Peretola), and the tomb of Benozzo Federighi, bishop of
Fiesole (1454–57; Santa Trinita, Florence).
The earliest documented work in polychrome
enameled terra-cotta, executed wholly in that medium, is a
lunette of the Resurrection over the door of the northern
sacristy of the cathedral (1442–45). According to Luca’s
contemporary, the writer Giorgio Vasari, the glaze with
which Luca covered his terra-cotta sculptures consisted of a
mixture of tin, litharge antimony, and other minerals. The
Resurrection lunette in the cathedral was followed by a
corresponding relief of the Ascension over the southern
sacristy door, in which a wider range of colour is employed.
Of the many decorative schemes for which
enameled terra-cotta was employed by Luca della Robbia, some
of the most important are the roundels of Apostles in
Filippo Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel in Florence (soon after
1443); the roof of Michelozzo’s Chapel of the Crucifix in
San Miniato al Monte, Florence (c. 1448); and a lunette over
the entrance of San Domenico at Urbino (c. 1449). Luca’s
last major work in this medium is an altarpiece in the
Palazzo Vescovile at Pescia (after 1472). There are also
many notable works by Luca outside Italy.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Luca Della Robbia.
Tondo Portrait of a Lady. 1465. Glazed terracotta, diameter: 54 cm
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

Luca Della Robbia.
Crucifixion. c. 1465. Glazed terracotta, 150 x 65 cm
Santa Maria, Impruneta

Luca Della Robbia.
The Peretola Tabernacle. 1441-43. Marble, bronze and glazed terracotta,
260 x 122 cm
Santa Maria, Peretola

Luca Della Robbia.
Visitation.
c. 1445. Glazed terracotta, 184 x 153 cm
San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, Pistoia

Luca Della Robbia.
St James the Great. 1440s. Glazed terracotta, diameter 134 cm
Pazzi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence
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