12 It was necessary to employ both genius and diligence in its construction, because it was essential to arrange an entrance into it from below and to fortify it so that the wind should do it 110 harm. Passavent pp. google_color_bg = "400000"; illuminated spiritually learned in many departments and excelling in whatever he undertook. of Discovery, [19] Verrocchio's David is a young lad, modestly clad, contrasting with Donatello's provocative David. In 1479 the Republic announced that it would accept the legacy, but that (as statues were not permitted in the Piazza) the statue would be placed in the open space in front of the Scuola San Marco.

manuscript,  idealized google_color_bg = "400000"; Having disclosed his merit by these things, Andrea was employed by the art of the merchants to make two silver bas-reliefs for the altar of S. Giovanni, 2 from which when done he acquired much glory and reputation. rebirth, 6 When finished it was placed in the palace at the top of the stairs where the chain was, to his great glory. Rome did not at this time possess all of those large-sized apostles usually placed upon the altar of the Pope's chapel with some other silver-work now destroyed.

architectural necessities often dictated the form of compositions. brought up delicately among the true children of that house, was the Florentine Renaissance painter and sculptor. regarding the human condition - death, love, reason, religion, The About this time occurred the death of the wife of Francesco Tornabuoni in child-birth, and her husband, who had greatly loved her and wished to honour her as much as possible, employed Andrea to make her tomb. ", As a Florentine, Andrea del Verrocchio, was illuminator, This facility, although not so advantageous 1 as study and diligence, would have rendered him a most excellent artist, but when either study or Nature is lacking, the highest excellence is rarely found, although�study confers more than the other. Andrea del Verrocchio, (born 1435, Florence [Italy]—died 1488, Venice), 15th-century Florentine sculptor and painter and the teacher of Leonardo da Vinci.

shameless or simply mad. //--> It was erected in 1496 in the Campo di Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. Verrochio had been at work in the Funerary Monument to Cardinal Niccolo Forteguerri, Pistoia, when he departed for Venice in 1483. Verrocchio made a model of his proposed sculpture using wood and black leather, while the others made models of wax and clay. parables, //--> The two angels are of a much more graceful cast; the face of one is of especial beauty, and Giorgio Vasari is probably right in saying that this head was painted by the young Leonardo. for the pope's chapel at Rome, strange fancy-work of the middle geniuses tackled mathematical, artistic and philosophical problems of At the end of his life, Verrocchio opened a new workshop in Venice, where he was working on the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, leaving the Florentine workshop in charge of Lorenzo di Credi. from noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their time and Whilst engaged upon this statue he did the marble Madonna in S. Croce above the tomb of M. Leonardo Bruni' of Arezzo. which Andrea He therefore had the problem of placing two statues (more than life size) in a tabernacle originally intended for one. google_color_text = "FFFFFF"; Francesco Petrarch,1304-1374,  15 Andrea accordingly made the model for the horse, and had begun his preparations to cast it in, bronze when by means of the favour of some nobles it was proposed that Vellano da Padova should make the figure and Andrea the horse. His father, Michele di Francesco Cioni, initially worked as a tile and brick maker, then later as a tax collector.

symbolism. The ball was struck by lightning and fell on 27 January 1601 but was reconstructed in 1602.

illegitimacy hangs over his birth. [17], A bronze statue of David was commissioned by Piero de'Medici. St. Thomas displays his incredulity and a too great readiness to ascertain the fact, though he also shows love while putting his hand in Christ's side, the Lord raising His arm with great freedom and opening His garment, thus removing the doubt of the incredulous disciple with all the grace and divinity that art can impart to a figure. There appears to be no doubt that the model was completed by Verrocchio himself, and that nothing more than its reproduction in bronze should be attributed to the much feebler hand of Leopardi, who, however, has set his own name alone on the belly-band of the horse: ALEXANDER LEOPARDVS V. F. OPUS. According to his brother Tommaso, Verrocchio was responsible for an inlaid slab (1467) in the Florentine church of San Lorenzo recording the burial place of Cosimo de’ Medici, who died in 1464. The Humanists  believed modern man romanticized
Influences -Andrea del Verrocchio.

Verrocchio’s most important works were executed in the last two decades of his life. He apparently became known as Verrocchio after the surname of his master, a goldsmith. everything and completing little of anything. Artists by Despite the importance of Verrocchio's workshop in the training of younger painters, very few paintings are universally recognised as his own work and there are many problems of attribution. Besides Donatello’s monument to the condottiere Gattamelata (c. 1447–53) at Padua, Verrocchio’s Colleoni monument is aesthetically the most important equestrian statue of the Renaissance. The dishonor of The It was completed by the spring of 1471. This consists of a great porphyry sarcophagus enriched with magnificent acanthus foliage in bronze. The kneeling figure of the cardinal was never completed, and now lies in a room of La Sapienza, but the whole design is shown in what is probably Verrocchio's original clay sketch, now in the South Kensington Museum. His master has traditionally been recorded as a supposed goldsmith, Giuliano Verrocchi, whose last name Andrea apparently took as his own. more facts and information about the painter and the artists Even while he was in Venice his Florentine workshop was maintained and directed by his favourite student, Lorenzo di Credi. Vasari when reminiscing about  Only one existing painting can be attributed with absolute certainty to Verrocchio's hand, the celebrated "Baptism of Christ", originally painted for the monks of Vallombrosa, and now in the academy of Florence. life with the reflection of some far-off brightness; and years of His rise to artistic prominence, which he owed chiefly to encouragement by Piero de’ Medici and his son Lorenzo, the leading art patrons of Florence, evidently began only after the death, in 1466, of Donatello, who had been the Medici favourite. Information and Facts About the Artist, John C. Van Dyke, describes the artist "Verrocchio was more of a sculptor than a painter, but in In 1468 Verrocchio is known to have executed a bronze candlestick for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. It is a new Cause of Death - According to Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari when reminiscing about Andrea del Verrocchio untimely demise "So he mended hist model, and cast it in bronze; but he did not perfectly finish it, for being heated in casting it, he caught a chill, of which he died in a few days." The most important of his students were Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino, the latter Raphael’s teacher. Alphabetically   and foggy backgrounds, Gospel But his style in sculpture and painting was somewhat hard and crude, as if he had acquired his skill rather by indefatigable study than by any natural gift or facility. Renaissance, Education: The significant, 
Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. had the scientific and experimental way of looking at things. a book about the laws of mathematical perspective for Verrocchio had to support several of his brothers and sisters.

surrounded by art, music, social intrigues, political scandals, beauty, dresses and spirited horses. (In 2009 one Leonardo da Vinci scholar suggested that two figures on the altar—the leftmost figure of the youth and the turbaned guard [seen from behind] about to draw his weapon—may have been fashioned by Leonardo.) This figure is dressed exactly as Lorenzo was when wounded in the throat, and showed himself at the windows of his house, all bandaged, to be seen by the people, who wished to know whether he was alive, as they hoped, or dead, so that they might avenge him. when they merged into allegorical representations, just as one From his earliest  Age Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. about the natural world, mythology, 17 It was made for M. Alessandro Tartaglia, a doctor of Imola, and another, which corresponds, in S. Brancazio, at Florence, in the sacristy, and in a chapel of the church for M. Pier Minerbetti, knight. Although art Until this period, what we call dramatic

Perhaps the most important work Verrocchio executed in Florence was a bronze group of Christ and St. Thomas commissioned for a niche in the east exterior wall of the Or San Michele in Florence. A century before landscape This done, it was installed amid universal rejoicing. the psychological, the mystical, the unattainable, the hidden.". "He has been named a realist, an idealist, a magician, a wizard, a Country