DOI chapter:
Chapter X: The Forteguerri Tomb
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62110#0209
THE FORTEGUERRI TOMB 129
of the said Monsignore and of his family and of all our city,
&c. &c.
From Pistoja, 11 March 1477.
Your servants the Operai of S. Jacopo, &c., to the
Magnifico Lorenzo dei Medici our benefactor, &c.*
It is now almost universally accepted that not a touch
of Verrocchio’s own chisel can be found in the marble
Monument, and various explanations have been suggested
to account for this. It has been supposed that he was
absent in Venice preparing his model of the Colleoni
horse; yet there was a lapse of two years between the
Pistoia commission and that of the Venetian Signoria
(1479). That he was occupied on other and more im-
portant work in Florence—the Relief for the Silver Altar
of S. Giovanni and the Group of Or S. Michele—is hardly
sufficient reason to account for his total neglect of the
Pistoia Monument and the abandonment of a work to
his assistants for the details of which he had with his own
hand carefully prepared studies. We know, besides, that
by the summer of 1483 (thus before his final departure
to Venice) a great part of the marble sculpture was already
completed, for in the account-books of the Commune of
Pistoia we read a record of his demand in July of that
year for fifty broad florins in part payment of the work,
which, it is expressly stated, was then “ in great part
brought to completion.” f Some more cogent reason must
* See Doc. xii. p.
f “ Andrea del Verrocchio havendo in buonaparte tracto a fine la
sepultura, &c., adomanda al presente fl. cinquanta larghi per parte di
quello ha avere.” (Provvisioni dell’ Arch. Comm, di Pistoja, Lib. 68
a c. 7.) And again, under the marginal indication, “Pro seppulchro
Card.lis,’’ is written, “ Cum Andreas del verrochio lapidarius et
I
of the said Monsignore and of his family and of all our city,
&c. &c.
From Pistoja, 11 March 1477.
Your servants the Operai of S. Jacopo, &c., to the
Magnifico Lorenzo dei Medici our benefactor, &c.*
It is now almost universally accepted that not a touch
of Verrocchio’s own chisel can be found in the marble
Monument, and various explanations have been suggested
to account for this. It has been supposed that he was
absent in Venice preparing his model of the Colleoni
horse; yet there was a lapse of two years between the
Pistoia commission and that of the Venetian Signoria
(1479). That he was occupied on other and more im-
portant work in Florence—the Relief for the Silver Altar
of S. Giovanni and the Group of Or S. Michele—is hardly
sufficient reason to account for his total neglect of the
Pistoia Monument and the abandonment of a work to
his assistants for the details of which he had with his own
hand carefully prepared studies. We know, besides, that
by the summer of 1483 (thus before his final departure
to Venice) a great part of the marble sculpture was already
completed, for in the account-books of the Commune of
Pistoia we read a record of his demand in July of that
year for fifty broad florins in part payment of the work,
which, it is expressly stated, was then “ in great part
brought to completion.” f Some more cogent reason must
* See Doc. xii. p.
f “ Andrea del Verrocchio havendo in buonaparte tracto a fine la
sepultura, &c., adomanda al presente fl. cinquanta larghi per parte di
quello ha avere.” (Provvisioni dell’ Arch. Comm, di Pistoja, Lib. 68
a c. 7.) And again, under the marginal indication, “Pro seppulchro
Card.lis,’’ is written, “ Cum Andreas del verrochio lapidarius et
I