Andrea del Verrocchio work location Florence
Sculpture
Around 1465 Verrocchio is believed to have worked on the lavabo of the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Florence.Between 1465 and 1467 he executed the funerary monument to Cosimo de' Medici for the crypt under the altar of the same church, and in 1472 he completed the monument to Piero and Giovanni de' Medici in the Old Sacristy.
In 1467 the Tribunale della Mercanzia, the judicial organ of the Guilds in Florence, commissioned from Verrocchio a bronze group portraying Christ and St. Thomas for the central niche of the east facade of Orsanmichele, which the Tribunale had recently purchased, to replace a statue of St. Louis of Toulouse, which had been removed. He therefore had the problem of placing two statues (more than life size) in a niche originally intended for one. As Covi says, the problem was resolved "in a most felicitous manner". The work was placed in position in 1483 and "has been acclaimed since the day of its unveiling and almost without exception recognised as a masterpiece."In 1468 Verrocchio made a bronze candlestick (1.57 metres high), now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, for the Signoria of Florence.Also in 1468 he contracted to make a golden ball (palla) to be placed on top of the lantern of Brunelleschi's cupola on the Duomo in Florence. The ball was ingeniously made of sheets of copper soldered together and hammered into shape and then gilded. It was completed by the spring of 1471. (The cross on top was made by other hands). The ball was struck by lightning and fell on 27 January 1601 but was reconstructed in 1602.In the early 1470s he made a voyage to Rome, while in 1474 he executed the Forteguerri monument for the Cathedral of Pistoia, which he left unfinished.A bronze statue of David was commissioned by Piero de'Medici. On grounds of style and technique it was dated by Butterfield to the mid-1460s; he considered it a masterpiece of Verrocchio's early career. It was purchased by the Signoria of Florence from Piero's heirs Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in 1476 and is now at the Bargello in Florence. Verrocchio's David is a young lad, modestly clad, contrasting with Donatello's provocative David. For this figure, the Master is purported to have used the young Leonardo, a newcomer to his workshop, as his model.At a date unknown (suggestions range from 1465 to 1480: Pope-Hennessy said about 1470) he finished in bronze a Putto (winged boy) with Dolphin, originally intended for a fountain in the Medici villa of Careggi and later brought to Florence for a fountain in the Palazzo della Signoria by the Grand Duke Cosimo de' Medici. It was replaced with a copy by Bruno Bearzi and since 1959 has been kept in a room in the Palazzo Vecchio.The marble bust of a lady with a bunch of flowers (Dama col mazzolino) in the Bargello at Florence is probably from the later 1470s. The identity of the lady is unknown.The relief for the funerary monument of Francesca Tornabuoni for Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome is also now in the Bargello at Florence. Verrocchio had been at work in the Funerary Monument to Cardinal Niccolo Forteguerri, Pistoia, when he departed for Venice in 1483.
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