When Andrea del Verrocchio’s bronze sculpture of “Christ and St. Thomas”
was installed in its niche overlooking a busy street in Florence in 1483, it so
awed the Florentines that one writer hailed it as “the most beautiful head of
the Savior ever made.” Now those of us lucky enough to live near Washington can
see a close replica of that head of Christ produced under Verrocchio’s
direction, as well as other works by the master and his disciples, at a unique
loan exhibition in the National Gallery of Art on view until Jan. 12.
The privately owned polychrome terra cotta “Bust of Christ” in
the exhibit will remind visitors of the Christ in Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last
Supper” painted in Milan about a decade later. This is no accident, because
Leonardo was the most famous of the major artists who began their career as
apprentices and co-workers in Verrocchio’s bustling workshop.
Two threads come together in the art of 15th-century Florence,
and both are manifest in the paintings, drawings and sculptures of Verrocchio,
who was born around 1435 and died in 1488.
One is the sea change in spirituality brought about by St.
Francis of Assisi. Around 1200, Francis led a movement dedicated to making
Christ’s humanity and his sharing of the joys and sorrows of ordinary people
manifest in every aspect of worship. The Franciscan brothers built huge brick
churches among the shantytowns of medieval Europe and decorated their walls
with vast frescoes that told the stories of Christ, Mary and the saints for
people who could not read or write.
The other thread was a renewed interest in the art of classical
Roman antiquity. By the 1400s, the ancient pagan religions no longer threatened
Christianity, and so Christian artists and writers mined the ancient sculpture
found all around them to forge an art grounded in looking at nature and
portraying living, breathing and suffering human beings.
The spring
Verrocchio was fortunate to have lived in the mid-15th century
when Florence was the cradle of this new civilization that we now call the
Renaissance. But he was a bit unlucky, at least in his reputation, overshadowed
by the more famous founders of the Florentine golden age — the sculptors
Ghiberti and Donatello, the architect Brunelleschi, and the painter Masaccio —
and then by the more famous masters of what we now call the High Renaissance:
Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael.
Leonardo studied with Verrocchio and stayed in his studio at least
10 years. The other two — Michelangelo and Raphael — were trained by his
leading students. It can truly be said that without Verrocchio there would be
no Sistine Chapel and no glorious papal apartments by Raphael. “Whatever
painters have that is good, they drank from Verrocchio’s spring,” wrote a
contemporary around 1500.
Highlights of the exhibit, which should not be missed by anyone
who loves the Catholic artistic heritage, include:
• The bronze David and Goliath, second of the great series of
Renaissance David statues.
• A selection of drawings that prove Verrocchio’s role as an
innovator in the medium of charcoal drawing.
• An intense head of St. Jerome, who appears to be looking
heavenward for inspiration in his life’s work of translating the Bible.
• Side by side, the Boy with a Dolphin, the first Renaissance
sculpture designed to be seen from every side; and the National Gallery’s Boy
on a Globe.
• The model for the Forteguerri tomb in Pistoia. Verrocchio was
the first sculptor to make a dynamic design in which the deceased is shown on
his knees praying to the Judging Christ.
Madonna and Child
The last room of the exhibit is devoted to the Madonna and Child
theme. A painting entirely by Verrocchio hangs near versions that pupils helped
to execute, and other pictures inspired by him. One can only imagine the
comfort that such paintings would have given to human mothers at a time when
infant mortality was tragically high. They could look at the Mother of God with
her Infant — destined to suffer and die — and feel that she understood them.
Today we are accustomed to think of artists as solitary geniuses,
but in the Florentine Renaissance they were more akin to motion picture
directors who needed the help of numerous craftsmen and the support and input
of patrons to complete their works.
Visitors to the show should think of this as they contemplate the
“Madonna and Child with Two Angels” loaned by the London National Gallery. In
this painting, the sculptor’s touch is evident in the three-dimensional volume
of the figures. But Verrocchio engaged the hands of the young Leonardo da Vinci
and the young Perugino (who later led the first campaign to decorate the walls
of the Sistine Chapel) to help create a masterpiece.
Hamerman writes from Reston.