A History of Sculpture

by Ernest Henry Short

LUCA DELLA ROBBIA

THE VISITATION

Pistoja

Turning to the works of an entirely different type, we note the same tendency in the delightfully human bas-reliefs of the della Robbias. No review of the art of sculpture would be complete without a reference to Luca della Robbia’s marble Singing Gallery. “The Cantoria” was begun in 1431 and was placed in the Cathedral at Florence in 1438. The taste of the seventeenth century, however, demanded the substitution of large balconies of carved and painted wood, and this singing gallery, together with that of Donatello, was taken down. Luca’s carved panels finally found their way to the Museo di Santa Maria del Fiore. Looking at the panels, we first of all note the immense advance in technical skill which enabled Luca della Robbia to represent the very poetry of rhythmic motion in stone. We note this. But we are moved by the human beauty of the whole conception. It is in a very real sense a religious work. The sculptor has taken as his theme the one hundredth and fiftieth psalm:

“Praise ye the Lord ... Praise him upon the loud cymbals; praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals.”

But the religion of Luca is essentially human.

The figures from the “Singing Gallery” are so well known that we have preferred to illustrate the art of Luca della Robbia by the beautiful “[Visitation]” at Pistoja, particularly as it is a terra-cotta and, therefore, recalls the medium in which the artist made his most constant appeal to his countrymen. The “[Visitation]” is a comparatively early work and shows that from the beginning Luca’s genius had little in common with that of Donatello. He gives us no hint of the restless search for knowledge which was the first consequence of the Italian’s realization of the powers of humanity. Luca stands to Donatello, the apostle of realism, as an Umbrian painter like Perugino stands to Signorelli. But his quiet self-restraint witnesses to a human virtue at least as noble—a trusting belief in the ultimate reign of peace and love.

The last fifteenth-century sculptor to whom reference must be made is Andrea del Verocchio (1435-1488). His “[Doubting Thomas]” still stands in the niche of Or San Michele, where it attracted all Florence 400 years ago. It is a fine example of what a first-rate technique apart from the fire of genius can produce. The lines of the drapery perhaps, incline to angularity; the figures are somewhat rigid, but the group is of real beauty and is conceived by a true sculptor. Whatever his shortcomings, the artist realizes sculpture to be the medium of man’s joy in the beauty of the human form. The fame of Verocchio might well rest upon the “[Doubting Thomas].” The name of the Florentine sculptor is, however, associated with another work—the equestrian statue of the Venetian commander, Bartolomeo Colleoni at Venice. That, at any rate, is a work of the very highest order. It was unfinished at Verocchio’s death, and was completed by the Venetian, Leopardi. No one can fairly judge what measure of the success of the statue is due to Verocchio’s earnest technique and how much to Leopardi’s fervid genius. In any case the [Colleoni monument] fitly closes this review of Italian sculpture during the fifteenth century. No more certain evidence of the capacity of the pre-Angelesque sculptors could be adduced. To this day, the nobility of the pose of horse and rider and the grandly martial spirit pervading the work, mark it as the greatest equestrian statue in the world.

Verocchio was born in 1435. He died when Michael Angelo was still a boy. The period of his life must, therefore, contain the answer to the final problem. Why was the acme of Italian sculpture reached at the end of the fifteenth century? It can be no mere chance that Michael Angelo produced his finest sculptures between 1495 and 1530. Why could it not have been fifty years earlier? Some factor was clearly present at the later date which had not been present when Verocchio was a boy. If it had been there, it had not acquired its subsequent force. Reverting for the last time to the Hellenic analogy we find the clue. Neither the material factors—such as the commissions for public works and memorial monuments—nor such a psychological factor as the broadened sphere of human activity exhaust the circumstances which finally gave Italy its Phidias and its Scopas. The last thing required was a series of dominating personalities able to focus the emotion and intellectual forces generated by the age. Florence, in fact, needed a Pericles.