DOI chapter:
Chapter I: Verrocchio and his Place in Qattrocento Art
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62110#0038
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VERROCCHIO
Yet in so personal a manner has Verrocchio treated these
decorations, accentuating their fierce and trenchant quali-
ties, that he has made them completely his own, and to us
now they serve almost as a sign-manual of his work and
that of his school. His fierce griffin has nothing spiritually
in common with the mild beast of Desiderio, nor his
terrible Gorgon-mask with those on the Roman breast-
plates. His acanthus leaf seems to bristle like the spines
of some formidable animal, and compared with the serpent-
tailed dragon of his decorations the original in Donatello’s
work seems almost tame. His temperamental energy
leads him to select his ornamental designs from the animal
rather than the vegetable world. The boar’s and lion’s
head and claws, the tortoise, the dolphin, all treated
most realistically, are the chief motives of his deco-
ration. He seems to have shared little his contemporaries’
love of fruit, flowers and foliage, and when he introduces
them it is with a fantastic ambiguity, a suggestion in
them of the animal, of which more will be said in con-
sideiang his work in detail and its relation to that of
Leonardo.
The same characteristic severity manifests itself in the
simplicity of his design and decoration, remarkable in that
epoch of elaborate ornament. While Desiderio, Rossellino,
and their followers were overloading their monuments with
every kind of device, Verrocchio, disregarding the popu-
larity of these works, remained rigorously severe. While
they were dazzling the eye with brilliant colour, elaborating
still farther the intricate carving with gold, crimson and
ultramarine, he depended for colour on the material itself.
Green serpentine, red porphyry, partially gilded bronze,
are his only colours. His constant use of porphyry and
VERROCCHIO
Yet in so personal a manner has Verrocchio treated these
decorations, accentuating their fierce and trenchant quali-
ties, that he has made them completely his own, and to us
now they serve almost as a sign-manual of his work and
that of his school. His fierce griffin has nothing spiritually
in common with the mild beast of Desiderio, nor his
terrible Gorgon-mask with those on the Roman breast-
plates. His acanthus leaf seems to bristle like the spines
of some formidable animal, and compared with the serpent-
tailed dragon of his decorations the original in Donatello’s
work seems almost tame. His temperamental energy
leads him to select his ornamental designs from the animal
rather than the vegetable world. The boar’s and lion’s
head and claws, the tortoise, the dolphin, all treated
most realistically, are the chief motives of his deco-
ration. He seems to have shared little his contemporaries’
love of fruit, flowers and foliage, and when he introduces
them it is with a fantastic ambiguity, a suggestion in
them of the animal, of which more will be said in con-
sideiang his work in detail and its relation to that of
Leonardo.
The same characteristic severity manifests itself in the
simplicity of his design and decoration, remarkable in that
epoch of elaborate ornament. While Desiderio, Rossellino,
and their followers were overloading their monuments with
every kind of device, Verrocchio, disregarding the popu-
larity of these works, remained rigorously severe. While
they were dazzling the eye with brilliant colour, elaborating
still farther the intricate carving with gold, crimson and
ultramarine, he depended for colour on the material itself.
Green serpentine, red porphyry, partially gilded bronze,
are his only colours. His constant use of porphyry and