Andrea del Verrocchio

“ The horse is designed with wonderful nobility and spirit, and the easy pose of the great general, combining perfect balance with absolute ease and security in the saddle, is a marvel of sculpturesque ability. Most remarkable skill is shown by the way in which Verrocchio has exaggerated the strongly marked features of the general, so that nothing of its powerful effect is lost by the lofty position of the head. According to Vasari, Verrocchio was one of the first sculptors who made a practical use of casts from living and dead subjects. ”

“ Pollaiuolo's love for jewel-forms in his paintings (executed together with his brother Piero) is seen not only in the Annunciation at Berlin, but in the group of SS. Eustace, James, and Vincent in the Uffizi, and the portrait of Simonetta Vespucci at Chantilly. Born in 1435, a few years after Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio resembled in the peculiar versatility of his genius, others of these typical artists of the Middle or High Renaissance—the Epoch of the Goldsmith it has been termed. ”

“ It thus happened, that as the Florentine citizen, Giovan-Francesco Rustici, acquitted himself very creditably in his youth, not only in design but in modelling in clay also, so by the Magnificent Lorenzo, who readily perceived his quickness of intellect and good parts, he was placed for the purposes of study with Andrea del Verrocchio, with whom, in like manner, had studied Leonardo da Vinci; the youth of the latter gave evidence, as will be remembered, of the rarest ability, and he was early endowed with extraordinary genius. ”

“ Now, the works of Pietro being much commended by the Florentines, a Prior of the same Convent of the Ingesuati, who took delight in art, caused him to make a Nativity, with the Magi, on a wall in the first cloister, after the manner of a miniature. This he brought to perfect completion with great loveliness and a high finish, and it contained an infinite number of different heads, many of them portrayed from life, among which was the head of Andrea del Verrocchio, his master. ”

“ He was too true an artist not to feel at once that he and Leonardo had changed places, and that the boy's Angel was worth more than all the rest of the picture. The chronicler tells us that he was so wounded at this discovery that he never touched paint any more, but though it is always rather hard to find ourselves thrown into the shade, probably Verrocchio's renunciation of painting lay deeper than mere envy. Why should he do badly what another could do perfectly? The boy's genius was greater than his: let his master be the first to admit it. ”

“ Andrea Verrocchio never gave himself rest; he was perpetually occupied either with painting or sculpture, and sometimes changed from one to the other, to the end that he might not weary himself by too long a continuance at one thing, as many do. And although he did not put the cartoons above described in execution, he nevertheless did paint some pictures; among others, one for the nuns of 8an Domenico, in Florence, a w’ork in which it appeared to him that he had acquitted himself very well ”

“ Truth was the miracle.
This was the man to whom Ser Piero brought his seventeen-year-old son; he became Leonardo's teacher; further, he became his disciple. The monks of Vallombrosa had commissioned Ser Andrea to paint them a Baptism of Christ, and the master set his pupil to execute the kneeling angel which formed part of the composition. The result showed Verrocchio that his scholar knew intuitively and clearly all that he himself had dimly guessed and sought for gropingly, slowly and laboriously, through a fog. ”

“ But he was soon taken into his father’s home at Florence, and given an education which hardly exceeded the proverbial “Three R’s”. Just when he was put with the painter and sculptor, Andrea Verrocchio, is uncertain, but it can hardly have been later than Leonardo’s thirteenth year, 1465. As a painter, Verrocchio exists for us chiefly in the work of his pupils. As a sculptor, however, he is a definite enough figure. His aim was plainly to infuse the new realism with an aristocratic elegance. What a young patrician is his David composing himself for the ordeal with a restrained well-bred smile! ”

“ Among others, there is the design for a sepulchral monument, erected by Andrea, in Venice, for a doge of that republic, with an Adoration of the Magi and a female head, all depicted on paper with the most finished delicacy.
Andrea Verrocchio executed the figure in bronze of a boy strangling a fish, [18] on the fountain of the villa at Careggi, for Lorenzo de’ Medici. This the Signor Duke Cosimo has now caused to be placed, as we see, on the fountain in the court of his palace; the boy is a truly admirable figure. ”

“ Another student Leonardo may have seen there—a lad into whose soul the level light and aërial illusions of Italian sunsets had passed, in after days famous as Perugino. Verrocchio was an artist of the earlier Florentine type, carver, painter, and worker in metals, in one; designer, not of pictures only, but of all things for sacred or household use, drinking-vessels, ambries, instruments of music, making them all fair to look upon, filling the common ways of life with the reflexion of some far-off brightness ”

“ More perfect in craftsmanship and in the knowledge of anatomy than Donatello, Verrocchio here, where he seems almost to have been inspired by the David of his master, surpasses him in energy and beauty, and while Donatello's figure is involved with the head of Goliath, so that the feet are lost in the massive and almost shapeless bronze, Verrocchio's David stands clear of the grim and monstrous thing at his feet. Simpler, too, and less uncertain is the whole pose of the figure, who is in no doubt of himself, and in his heart he has already "slain his thousands." ”

“ In the first of them, corresponding to the room with Verrocchio's David downstairs, we find Verrocchio again, with a bust of Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici (whom Botticelli painted in the Uffizi holding a medal in his hand) and a most exquisite Madonna and Child in terra-cotta from S. Maria Nuova. (This is on a hinge, for better light, but the official skies will fall if you touch it.) Here also is the bust of a young warrior by Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498) who was Verrocchio's closest rival and one of Ghiberti's assistants for the second Baptistery doors. ”

“ Meyer, "it is not too much to say that he was the creator of that child-type which is so universal in the Italian art of the Cinque-cento." "Verrocchio," says E. Müntz, "is the plastic artist, deeply enamoured of form, delighting in hollowing it out, in fining it down; he has none of the literary temperament of a Donatello, a Mantegna, masters who in order to give expression to the passions that stir them, to realise their ideal, need a vast theatre, numerous actors, dramatic subjects. There is no mise-en-scène, no searching after recondite ideas, with Verrocchio. ”

“ This adorable work—a little bronze Cupid struggling with a spouting dolphin—was made for Lorenzo de' Medici's country villa at Careggi and was brought here when the palazzo was refurnished for Francis I, Cosimo I's son and successor, and his bride, Joanna of Austria, in 1565. Nothing could better illustrate the accomplishment and imaginative adaptability of the great craftsmen of the day than the two works of Verrocchio that we have now seen: the Christ and S. Thomas at Or San Michele, in Donatello and Michelozzo's niche, and this exquisite fountain splashing water so musically. ”

“ Certainly one can think of no one else who could have given the picture its quality, which increases in richness with every visit to the gallery; but the workshop of Verrocchio, where Leonardo worked, together with Lorenzo di Credi and Perugino, with Andrea of the True Eye over all, no doubt put forth wonderful things. The Annunciation is unique in the collection, both in colour and character: nothing in the Uffizi so deepens. There are no cypresses like these in any other picture, no finer drawing than that of Mary's hands. Luca's flowers are better, in the adjoining room ”

“ When quite a young man he started across the hills to Florence. He probably travelled as a journeyman, begging or earning his bread along the way. He reached Florence, entered the studio of Andrea Verrocchio, buried himself in a passionate study of his art, and, barely ten years after the date when, as an almost unknown artist, he had entered Florence with the secret of his genius in his soul, he left it again to go to Rome and paint a portion of the Sistine Chapel at the command of the reigning pope. Pietro studied in good schools and in excellently good society. ”

“ Verrocchio, although hardly one of the great creative or inventive forces in the art of his age at Florence, was a first-rate craftsman alike as goldsmith, sculptor and painter, and particularly distinguished as a teacher. In his studio Leonardo worked for several years (about 1470-1477) in the company of Lorenzo di Credi and other less celebrated pupils. Among his contemporaries he formed special ties of friendship with the painters Sandro Botticelli and Pietro Perugino. ”

“ It is to be observed, that the latest Florentine commentators throw doubt on the assertion, that this is the Marsyas restored by Verrocchio, but their dissent fronr the general opinion respecting it does not appear to be well grounded. ↑ Bartolommeo Colleoni, who entered the service at Venice, as general of her armies, in 1467.— See Cicognara, Iscrizioni Veneziane, vol. ii. p. 298. ↑ From the will of Verrocchio, cited by Gaye, Carteggio ineditOy &c., vol. i. pp. 367—369, it would appear that the model only had been completed. ”

“ Vasari, it does not stand for Ser, but for Sepulcrum. —Bottari. ↑ See the Ragionamento Primo, Giornata seconda, of Vasari. ↑ He was not the first, although among the first. The custom of moulding heads in the manner here described had prevailed somewhat earlier. In the Uffizj, there is a cast of Fillipo Brunelleschi, taken when Verrocchio could not have been more than fourteen years old.' —Bottari. ”

“ In the portrait of Monna Vanna degli Albizi, the Lady with the Nosegay, Verrocchio is the author of the most beautiful bust of the Renaissance. She fills the room with sunshine, and all day long she seems to whisper some beloved name. ”

“ A disciple of Paolo Uccello, he, like his master, affirmed that Perspective must be based on science. 'Geometry,' he said, 'being a part of mathematics, mother of all knowledge, is also the mother of drawing, which is the father of all the arts.' Complete knowledge and complete enjoyment of beauty were to him identical. Unlike Botticelli, and others of his kidney, Verrocchio was neither ravished by extraordinary beauty nor repelled by unusual deformity. ”

“ Verocchio is said to have spent much time in drawing from the antique, and his works prove him to have been diligent and painstaking; these qualities made him the sculptor that he was; but we see no traces in his work of the heaven-born genius which makes the artist great, and so inspires himself that his works fill all beholders with an enthusiasm in a degree akin to his own; the works of such artists as Verocchio, who have only the excellencies which come from patient industry, interest us, but they cannot move our hearts. ”

“ He was born at Vinci, from which he takes his name, near Florence—that Athens of the Middle Ages—in the lower Val d'Arno, on the borders of the territory of Pistoia. His father was an advocate, not rich, but able to give his son the advantage of the best instructors in the science and art of that period. He studied under Andrea Verrocchio (famous for his superb bronze equestrian statue of the Coleoni at Venice) , himself uniting the arts of sculptor, chaser in metal, and painter. ”

“ There are many works here given to Lorenzo, who seems to have been a better painter than he was a sculptor: the Madonna and Child (24) , the Annunciation (1160) , the Noli me Tangere (1311) , and above all, the Venus (3452) , are beautiful, but less living than one might expect from the pupil of Verrocchio. Verrocchio's true pupil, if we may call him a pupil of any master at all who was an universal genius, wayward and altogether personal in everything he did, was Leonardo da Vinci. ”

“ 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 [Pg 180] 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. ”

“ As he grew older, Verrocchio would teach him how you could raise heavy weights by the help of levers or cranes, how to draw up water from immense depths, or how to tunnel through mountains—for the Italians have always been famous for their skill as engineers. But it was the boy Leonardo, and not the man Verrocchio, who invented the plan of so altering the course of the river Arno that a canal might be cut between the cities of Florence and Pisa. ”

“ Thomas" and the statue of Colleoni, the celebrated condottiere who had commanded the Venetian troops. Both of these are in bronze. Little as the deep feeling of the scene between Christ and the doubting Thomas might seem apt to lend itself to expression in sculpture, Verrocchio has succeeded in making an extremely beautiful and touching work of art. The Divine Humanity, urging Thomas the doubter to put his hand into His pierced side, is a wonderful realization of one of the most pathetic of incidents. The triumph of Verrocchio's genius, however, is the "Colleoni." ”