VII. Girolamo della Robbia (1488-1566), another of Andrea’s sons, was an architect and a sculptor in marble and bronze as well as in enamelled clay. During the first part of his life he, like his brothers, worked with his father, but in 1528 he went to France and spent nearly forty years in the service of the French Royal family. Francis I. employed him to build a palace in the Bois de Boulogne called the Château de Madrid. This was a large well-designed building, four storeys high, two of them having open loggie in the Italian fashion. Girolamo decorated it richly with terra-cotta medallions, friezes and other architectural features.[19] For this purpose he set up kilns at Suresnes. Though the palace itself has been destroyed, drawings of it exist.[20]
The best collections of Robbia ware are in the Florentine Bargello, Accademia and Museo del Duomo; the Victoria and Albert Museum (the finest out of Italy); the Louvre, the Cluny and the Berlin Museums; while fine examples are to be found in New York, Boston, St Petersburg and Vienna. Many fine specimens exist in private collections in England, France, Germany and the United States. The greater part of the Robbia work still remains in the churches and other buildings of Italy, especially in Florence, Fiesole, Arezzo, La Verna, Volterra, Barga, Montepulciano, Lucca, Pistoia, Prato and Siena.
Literature.—H. Barbet de Jouy, Les della Robbia (Paris, 1855); W. Bode, Die Künstlerfamilie della Robbia (Leipzig, 1878); “Luca della Robbia ed i suoi precursori in Firenze,” Arch. stor. dell’ arte (1899); “Über Luca della Robbia,” Sitzungsbericht von der Berliner kunstgeschichtlichen Gesellschaft (1896); Florentiner Bildhauer der Renaissance (Berlin, 1902); G. Carocci, I Dintorni de Firenze (Florence, 1881); “Il Monumento di Benozzo Federighi,” Arte e Storia (1894); “Opere Robbiane poco noti,” Arte e storia (1898, 1899); Cavallucci et Molinier, Les della Robbia (Paris, 1884); Maud Crutwell, Luca and Andrea della Robbia and their Successors (London, 1902); A. du Cerceau, Les plus excellents bastiments de France (Paris, 1586); G. Milanesi, Le Vite scritte da Vasari (Florence, 1878); M. Reymond, Les della Robbia (Florence, 1897); La Sculpture Florentine (Florence, 1898); I. B. Supino, Catalogo del R. Museo di Firenze (Rome 1898); Vasari (see Milanesi’s edition).
(J. H. M.; W. B.*)
[1] Genealogical tree of Della Robbia sculptors:—
[2] Not 1388, as Vasari says. See a document printed by Gaye, Carteggio inedito, i. pp. 182-186.
[3] Vasari is not quite right in his account of these reliefs: he speaks of Euclid and Ptolemy as being in different panels.
[4] See Cavallucci, S. Maria del Fiore, pt. ii. p. 137.