Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., through Jan. 12
Blame Leonardo da Vinci if you’re unfamiliar with the name Andrea del Verrocchio, said Cammy Brothers in The Wall Street Journal. An “enormously talented” 15thcentury sculptor and painter, Verrocchio was a deservedly celebrated figure in Florentine art before the most gifted of his many able apprentices overshadowed him. Fortunately, with the arrival of a “magnificent” exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, “the time has come for Verrocchio to reclaim his place as an innovator in his own right.” He was the rare Renaissance man who earned the sobriquet, and this gathering of 51 works by the master and his pupils “makes clear how much he had to teach.”
His studio played a major role in the history of Western art, said William Newton in TheFederalist.com. Besides Leonardo, his acolytes included Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, and Domenico Ghirlandaio, which means Verrocchio also taught the teachers of Raphael and Michelangelo. He was arguably a greater sculptor than painter: Just look at the beautiful hands of Lady With Flowers, a marble bust, or the intimidating scowl on Lorenzo de’ Medici, a painted terra-cotta bust thought to be a copy of Verrocchio’s lost original. Still, “the
highlight of the show is unquestionably Verrocchio’s bronze sculpture of David.” Though less famous than Michelangelo’s or even Donatello’s sculptures of the young giant slayer from the Bible, to me it’s the best of the three. “I mean, just look at him: The young shepherd and future king of Israel has just strutted onto the world stage with all the swagger of a young Mick Jagger at a sold-out stadium concert.”
Somehow, Putto With a Dolphin— a bronze winged cherub grasping the slippery sea creature—is even more impressive, said Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. Still, the “most absorbing” room in this show focuses on painting. Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci occupies center stage, but around the portrait are arrayed various iterations of the Madonna and Child, including one by Verrocchio that highlights how much Leonardo and his contemporaries took from their mentor, including some of the techniques that Leonardo is most admired for. By the time you leave the final gallery, you’ll feel you know Verrocchio well enough to understand that he also left Leonardo more than a set of drafting tricks. “There was a worldview as well, a restlessness, a surfeit of curiosity and ambition.”