DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61670#0029
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA
PREFATORY
No artist of the Renaissance has suffered more severely from
lack of discriminating judgment than Luca della Robbia.
While every sightseer has now some idea at least of the main
characteristics of his great contemporaries, the work of Luca,
one of the most individual and uncompromising of sculptors,
is known so little that his name is used more or less as a generic
term for every enamelled terra-cotta of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries. Not only are the works of Andrea constantly
ascribed to him, but many of the most paltry productions of
the later school. In some of the chief museums of Europe
nearly every work in glazed earthenware, or even painted
stucco, bears his name, no matter how poor the modelling nor
how coarse and theatrical the treatment.
It is perhaps natural that confusion should exist between
work in many points so similar as the glazed terra-cottas of
Luca and Andrea, but it is strange indeed to find productions so
different in aim and quality as those of Giovanni and the atelier
classed under a name so great—the name of a sculptor of the
first rank, hardly inferior to Donatello himself for intellect,
imagination, and creative power.
Luca is known to the public chiefly as the inventor, or to
speak more correctly, the adapter to sculpture of the process
which bears his name, too little known as the sculptor in
marble and bronze. Yet it is in marble and bronze that he
has put forth his greatest power. Were his genius judged by
the high standard of the Cantoria, the Bronze Doors and the
Campanile Reliefs, the attribution to him of any trivially con-
ceived or poorly executed work would be impossible. In appre-
ciating the stately strength and classic simplicity, the splendid
3
PREFATORY
No artist of the Renaissance has suffered more severely from
lack of discriminating judgment than Luca della Robbia.
While every sightseer has now some idea at least of the main
characteristics of his great contemporaries, the work of Luca,
one of the most individual and uncompromising of sculptors,
is known so little that his name is used more or less as a generic
term for every enamelled terra-cotta of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries. Not only are the works of Andrea constantly
ascribed to him, but many of the most paltry productions of
the later school. In some of the chief museums of Europe
nearly every work in glazed earthenware, or even painted
stucco, bears his name, no matter how poor the modelling nor
how coarse and theatrical the treatment.
It is perhaps natural that confusion should exist between
work in many points so similar as the glazed terra-cottas of
Luca and Andrea, but it is strange indeed to find productions so
different in aim and quality as those of Giovanni and the atelier
classed under a name so great—the name of a sculptor of the
first rank, hardly inferior to Donatello himself for intellect,
imagination, and creative power.
Luca is known to the public chiefly as the inventor, or to
speak more correctly, the adapter to sculpture of the process
which bears his name, too little known as the sculptor in
marble and bronze. Yet it is in marble and bronze that he
has put forth his greatest power. Were his genius judged by
the high standard of the Cantoria, the Bronze Doors and the
Campanile Reliefs, the attribution to him of any trivially con-
ceived or poorly executed work would be impossible. In appre-
ciating the stately strength and classic simplicity, the splendid
3