Cruttwell, Maud: Verrocchio (London: Duckworth and Co., 1904)

CHAPTER XI
THE TORNABUONI RELIEF
We have now to consider a work officially and with-
out interrogation attributed to Verrocchio, and almost
universally accepted as being at least designed by him,
yet which, so far from bearing any likeness to his style, is in
direct contrast with it, a production as trivial and vulgar
in sentiment as it is feeble in execution. The attribution
and title of this marble relief in the Bargello Collection,
inscribed “ The Death of Lucrezia Pitti Tornabuoni,” rests
upon no surer basis than that a subject similar to that
represented—the death of a woman in childbirth—is
recorded by Vasari to have been executed by Verrocchio
for the Church of the Minerva, Rome. Much ingenuity
has been employed in the effort to identify the Bargello
relief with this work, to account for its presence in
Florence, and for its total dissimilarity to any authentic
work of Verrocchio. I hope, however, to prove that the
relief is not that of Verrocchio, which seems certainly to
have existed in the Minerva, but a free adaptation by his
mediocre follower, Francesco di Simone, executed to com-
memorate the death of a lady of the Strozzi family.
Nothing in art criticism is more surprising than the
attribution to so scientific and imaginative an artist as