Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
Matteo Civitale, Benedetto da Majano, Mino da Fiesole, Luca della Robbia, Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, Lo Scalza, Omodeo, and the Sansovini, not to mention less illustrious sculptors, filled the churches of Italy with this elaborate stone-work.
His bas-reliefs upon the façade of S. Petronio at Bologna, and round the font of S. John's Chapel in the cathedral of Siena, enable us, however, to compare his style with that of Ghiberti in the handling of a subject common to both, the "Creation of Eve." There is no doubt but that Della Quercia was a formidable rival.
The weighty chapter in Alberti's Treatise on Painting, lib. iii. cap. 5, might be used to support this paragraph. Quercia, born 1374; Ghiberti, 1378; Brunelleschi, 1379; Donatello, 1386. They are engraved in the work cited above, Le Tre Porte, seconda Porta, Tavole i. ii. The bas-reliefs of S. Petronio were executed between 1425 and 1435.
The young Florentine, while an exile in Bologna, and engaged upon the shrine of S. Dominic, must have spent hours of study before the sculptures of S. Petronio; so that this seed of Della Quercia's sowing bore after many years the fruit of world-renowned achievement in Rome. Two other memorable works of Della Quercia must be parenthetically mentioned.
The competitors for this work were Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, Donato, and Lorenzo di Bartoluccio, all Florentines; Jacopo della Quercia of Siena, and Niccolò d'Arezzo, his pupil; Francesco di Valdambrina; and Simone da Colle, called Simone de' Bronzi.
Della Quercia, on the façade of S. Petronio, confines himself to the creative act, expressed by the raised hand of the Maker, and the answering attitude of Eve; and this conception receives final treatment from Michael Angelo in the frescoes of the Sistine. What Giotto himself was, as a designer for sculpture, is shown in the little reliefs upon the basement of his campanile.
Given now to Nanni di Banco, a sculptor of the end of the fourteenth century, whom Vasari tells us was the pupil of Donatello, it long passed as the work of Jacopo della Quercia.
Michael Angelo must have spent his spare time in studying the bas-reliefs by Jacopo della Quercia upon the façade of San Petronio, for he used many of the motives in his next great work, the Sistine vault. When the wax model of the statue of Pope Julius was ready, Michael Angelo sent to Florence for the ordnance founder to the Republic, Maestro dal Ponte, of Milan, to cast it for him.
Indeed, in these first years of the sixteenth century he may be said to have been the only Tuscan sculptor of commanding eminence. Ghiberti, Della Quercia, Brunelleschi, Donatello, all had joined the majority before his birth.
Just there we seem to find the desire of the sixteenth century for unity that found expression in the deeds of Cesare Borgia, the Discorsi of Niccolò Macchiavelli. By Jacopo della Quercia. Duomo, Lucca
Word Of The Day
Others Looking