THE GOLDSMITH-PAINTERS OF FLORENCE

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VIII
VERROCHIO
1435 - 1488
"VIRGIN AND CHILD"
When it is remembered that Verrochio was the master of Leonardo da Vinci, amongst other great pupils, it will be realised how prodigious an influence he had upon the men who came after him.

IX
BOTTICELLI
1444 - 1510
FLORENTINE SCHOOL
"GIOVANNA DEGLI ALBIZZI AND THE THREE GRACES"
(Giovanna Albizzi et les Trois Graces ou les Vertus)
(LOUVRE)
To the right Giovanna, a young woman in a red-brown dress, wearing a white veil on her golden hair and a necklace of pearls round her neck, advances towards four maidens clad in delicately-tinted robes. She holds in her outstretched hands a white linen cloth into which the four maidens throw flowers symbolic of the Virtues.
Fresco painting detached from the wall. 7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 4 in. (2.12 x 2.84).



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CHAPTER XI

WHICH SHOWS THE KINSHIP OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

THERE arose in Florence, about the middle fourteen-hundreds, a group of painters who had served their early apprenticeship in the goldsmiths' shops.

THE KINSHIP OF ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO AND PIERO POLLAIUOLO
____________________1429 - 1498__________________1443 - 1496

The two brothers POLLAIUOLO were born in Florence ; the elder, Antonio Poliamolo, being apprenticed by his father to a goldsmith, one Bartoluccio, who was stepfather to the famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, him who wrought the gates to the Baptistery of Florence which were to win Michelangelo's praise in the years to come, as being "worthy to set at the entrance to Paradise " ; and it was to assist in the modelling of some of the ornaments of these gates that young Antonio Poliamolo was employed. Antonio Poliamolo was soon a goldsmith working on his own account, and was to become a famous sculptor in bronze. To that fame Cellini paid his weighty tribute that Pollaiuolo's designs were of such excellence and beauty that all the goldsmiths and many sculptors and painters made use of them. Antonio, strongly influenced as a sculptor by Donatello [96] and as a painter by Uccello, is said to have been the first artist to dissect the dead in order to study anatomy. It was in the latter end of his life that he took to painting; and was one of the earliest of the Florentine artists to employ oils. Older than his brother by fourteen years, he survived him a couple of years.

PIERO POLLAIUOLO (1443-1496) was a painter from the beginning of his career. Indeed, he is reputed to have worked as quite a child in the studios of BALDOVINETTI and Andrea dal Castagno ; but he must have been little more than a mere child under Castagno, since that rugged and forceful man died when the boy was thirteen.

The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian at the National Gallery in London is vastly interesting not only on its own account, as showing the Masaccio tradition of forceful realism in which the Poliamoli were bred, but as having been painted by both brothers. The elder Antonio's sculpturesque quality is seen in the vigorous and severe drawing of the sculptor, reared in Donatello's atmosphere, and his knowledge of anatomy is fully revealed in his grip of the human form and his skill in stating the human movement, just as the younger Piero's colour-faculty reveals the painter.

VERROCCHIO
1435 - 1488

The most famous pupil of the two Poliamoli was ANDREA DEL VERROCCHIO. But it was to his pupilage under Donatello that Verrocchio was most deeply indebted for his mastery. Most famous as a sculptor-he is immortal as the creator of one of the great equestrian statues of the Renaissance, the world-known figure of the great condottiere Colleone at Venice (1479)-he also came to high repute as a painter; and as such had a far-reaching and strong influence upon the great art of Florence.

X
BOTTICELLI
1444 - 1510
"SPRING"
(IN THE FLORENCE ACADEMY)
The date of this painting is much debated. It may probably be about 1478, before the Roman visit. Reading from the left the figures are Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Primavera the Spring-maiden, Flora, and Zephyrus.
Painted in tempera on wood.