Luca della it is time to turn to the third great sculptor of the early Renaissance, Luca della Robbia (1400-1481), a greater artist than Ghiberti, as great a one as Donatello, but on what different lines! As in the previous period we found in Andrea Pisano the perfect embodi ment of Christian ideas in plastic form, so too we find it in Luca della Robbia, though the art is of another age. In Andrea there is more majesty and strength; in Luca, more grace and human feeling: we see that we are in a more humanistic period. Luca stands as the champion of religious art against the ever-increasing realism of the Tuscan school.
Though Luca produced some fine works in marble, like the beautiful singing and playing children of his choir-screen—whont it is so interest ing to compare with the corresponding work by Donatello—he is best know n for his many works in the enamelled ware of which he was the inventor, and in the execution of which he was followed by a large school whose productions spread not only over all Italy, but also into foreign lands.
A single slab front his marble choir-screen is given in Figure t (p1. 25), which reproduces, not the romping groups of younger children that dance along and intertwine in rhythmic motion on other slabs of this series, but a quiet group of older boys all singing front one book, while the leader keeps time with his hand. This work combines excellence of com position with beauty of drapery and the most remarkable truthfulness in the faces; we can almost hear the voices. Another work by Luca is the Virgin and John the Baptist adoring the infant Christ (fit. 23,fi.c. 6).
Ref/Jo/We Ascots/wt.—In a far higher sphere of art should be placed that magnificent enamelled relief over a door of the Cathedral at Florence which represents the Ascension (p1. 25, fig. 3), a composition that seems almost inspired. Breaking entirely away from the usual composition, Luca represents the twelve apostles and the Virgin kneeling, while Christ, surrounded by rays and raising both hands in blessing, is slowly ascending from the earth. Intense religions faith is expressed in all the earnest, fine faces, and the effect is heightened by the beautiful white robes which drape all the figures. In technical perfection Luca della Robbia yielded the palm to none, but this he used merely as a means, not as an end; we do not find in him that preponderance of the human clement which is so conspicuous in all other sculptors of the period.
.1.1adonaa qf Andrea della a11 Luca's pupils and followers, the most remarkable was Andrea della Robbia, whose favorite piece is the Adoring Madonna (pi 25, 2) in the Museum at Florence, a perfect embodiment of grace and beauty and worthy of the master himself. The Virgin, with clasped hands and robed in white, kneels in silent adora tion before the divine Child, who reclines on a hillock out of which a lily grows. There is very little color about these earlier productions of Luca and his school, but soon it became the habit to use varied and strong coloring in these enamelled reliefs, ending in the extremely realistic and highly-colored frieze of the I hospital at Pistoja, a work executed nearly a century after Luca invented the process.
Jacopo della on an equality with these three great artists of the early fifteenth century stands the Sienese Jacopo della (therein (0371-1,13S), who was the contemporary and rival of Donatello, and who also competed with Ghiberti for the bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence and executed by the side of Donatello sonic fine bronze reliefs for the magnificent font in the Baptistery at Siena.
is hardly necessary to mention the many artists who flourished in the latter half of the fifteenth century, as they contributed nothing permanent to the development of sculpture. The leading figure of the sixteenth century and the second period of the Renaissance is that great master Michelangelo Buonarroti. He was born at the Castle of Caprese in Tuscany, near Florence, in 1475, and died at Rome in 1564; his artistic talent was most precocious, and, as he lived to be nearly a cen tenarian, his powerful hand ruled three-quarters of the sixteenth century.
In his earlier works Michelangelo subordinated his genius to the classic spirit of the age, and carved fames' heads, battles of centaurs, and statues of Hercules and Bacchus. Very soon, however, lie produced some works of religious art, of which the earliest as well as the most remarkable is the famous Pieta in St. Peter's at Rome—a work in which are displayed a delicacy and a refinement quite contrary to his usual mood. But his true spirit shows itself in the David, the 'Medici monuments, and the Moses, in which the highest degree of the material sublime is reached.