46

LUCA DELLA ROBBIA

His anatomical modelling is of the greatest science and
beauty, suggestive of the construction of bone and muscle
rather than realistic, indicating in the subtlest and truest
manner the delicate variations of surface, while retaining the
general breadth and significance. It is this combination of
breadth and delicacy which makes Luca’s work so satisfying
and its interest so inexhaustible. His Cantoria, for example,
seen with the unaided eye is fully as effective and homogeneous
as Donatello’s, while the minutest investigation only reveals
fresh beauties in the delicate modelling of the limbs, subtle
curves and lines, and a thousand interests of movement and
expression.
In his draperies he omits all that is not necessary to
the accentuation of the form beneath. Not a fold, not
a line is introduced for any other purpose. In particular
he keeps them severely plain over the breast and shoulders,
a peculiarity we shall find nearly invariable. Simplicity and
directness in all his methods is the chief characteristic of his
work.
Significance, breadth, and simplicity—the qualities we find
in the Olympian sculptures and in the best art of all times-
these are the technical characteristics of Luca della Robbia’s
art; imagination, earnestness, and virility their spiritual
equivalents. Expressive of but one side of the Renaissance
movement he may be, but it is its noblest, most pregnant
side. As the craftsman who cultivated to perfection the
technical possibilities of sculpture, and as the interpreter of
the intellectual, and in the broadest sense of the word,
the religious emotions of his epoch, Luca ranks below none
of his contemporaries. What he expresses, optimism, faith
in ideals and in the nobler human qualities, he expresses
convincingly and emphatically; what he leaves unsaid, though
historically important as part of humanity’s struggle towards
a solution of the riddle of life, is of less artistic value.