This book explores the role of glazed terracotta sculpture in
Renaissance Italy, from c. 1450 to the mid-1530s. In its brightness and
intense colour glazed terracotta strongly attracted the viewer's gaze.
Its pure and radiant surfaces also had the power to raise the mind and
soul of the faithful to contemplation of the divine. The quasi-magical
process of firing earthenware coated with tin-based paste, promoted
initially by imports from the East, was seized upon by Luca della
Robbia, who realised that glazed terracotta was the ideal vehicle for
the numinous. He began to create sculptures in the medium in the 1430s,
and continued to produce them for the rest of his life. After Luca's
death, his nephew, Andrea della Robbia, inherited his workshop in
Florence and continued to develop the medium, together with his sons.
The book considers some of the large-scale altarpieces created by the
Della Robbia family in parallel with a number of small-scale figures in
glazed terracotta, mostly made by unidentified sculptors. The
captivating illustrations integrate these two categories of glazed
terracotta sculpture into the history of Italian Renaissance art. By
focusing on a specific artistic medium which stimulated piety in both
ecclesiastical and domestic contexts, this book offers new ways of
thinking about the religious art of the Italian Renaissance. The links
it establishes between lay devotion and the creation of religious images
in glazed terracotta invite reassessment of habitual distinctions
between private and public art.
