The Allure of Glazed Terracotta in Renaissance Italy

The Allure of Glazed Terracotta in Renaissance Italy



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English | 15 Mar. 2022 | ISBN: 191255478X | True PDF | 183 pages | 163 MB
Author: Zuzanna Sarnecka

In her richly illustrated study Sarnecka brings together devotional glazed terracotta produced in Italy by the Della Robbia family and by unidentified contemporaries working in the same medium to propose a new way of thinking about the religious art in Renaissance Italy.

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.