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Distinctive Gifts
IMPORTED FROM ITALY
DELLA ROBBIA
Della Robbia
, Florentine family of sculptors and ceramists famous for their enameled
terra-cotta or faience. Many of the Della Robbia pieces are still in their
original settings in Florence, Siena, and other Italian cities, but the finest
collections are in Florence in the cathedral, the Bargello, and the Italian
Academy, and in London in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Luca della Robbia,
1400?-1482, founder of the atelier, was known first as a sculptor in bronze and
marble. He was commissioned (1421) to design the choir gallery of the cathedral
at Florence. Later he perfected a process for making clay reliefs and figures
permanent by coating them with a glaze compounded of tin, antimony, and other
substances. In his panels and medallions, the Madonna and saints and angels
usually appear in white on a blue background, sometimes with touches of gold and
color in the decorative setting. A Madonna and Child is in the
Metropolitan Museum. Andrea della Robbia, 1435-1525?, nephew and chief
pupil of Luca, made a marble altar for a church near Arezzo and extended the use
of clay to whole altarpieces (one is in the Church of Santa Croce, Florence),
friezes, and fountains. His medallions on the Foundling Hospital, Florence, show
simple baby forms ( bambini ) on blue ground, but in many of his
medallions the central figures are framed in garlands of richly colored fruits
and flowers. The Virgin in Adoration, an unglazed terra-cotta relief, is
in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Andrea della Robbia's sons,
Luca II, c.1480-1550, Giovanni, c.1469-c.1529, and Girolamo,
c.1488-1566, carried on the family tradition into the 16th cent.
SOURCE: The Columbia
Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | Date: 2007
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