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Saint Donatus Purifies a Well, Giovanni della Robbia
This large lunette is by Giovanni (1469-1529/30), great nephew of Luca [della Robbia] and the last head of the family workshop. It shows Saint Donatus (Donato in Italian), the fourth-century bishop of Arezzo, performing one of his miracles, purifying a poisoned well from whose waters rises a dragon. The scene takes place before a landscape with trees and small plants on the rolling hills, all in high relief and inspired by the Northern prints and paintings that were so modish in Italy in the early decades of the sixteenth century.
The face of the saint is in the white glazed terracotta well known to Luca's admirers, while the dragon, landscape, and vestments of Saint Donatus are in bright shades of yellow, green, blue, and a color intended to be red. Allan Marquand's predecessor, Marcel Reymond, commented that "whenever [the Della Robbias] wished to produce a red glaze they had to be satisfied with a very inadequate result, varying in shade from a red-violet, to a purple or plum, or even brown."
The presence of so many colors characteristic of Giovanni's palette, his attempt to rival the art of painting, and the spaces between the individual sections in which the relief was mod eled and fired-deliberately left visible by the conservator-make this work an ideal technical study piece for students. Equally compelling is the serious and benign presence of the bishop saint, still conceived in the spirit of Luca.
The face of the saint is in the white glazed terracotta well known to Luca's admirers, while the dragon, landscape, and vestments of Saint Donatus are in bright shades of yellow, green, blue, and a color intended to be red. Allan Marquand's predecessor, Marcel Reymond, commented that "whenever [the Della Robbias] wished to produce a red glaze they had to be satisfied with a very inadequate result, varying in shade from a red-violet, to a purple or plum, or even brown."
The presence of so many colors characteristic of Giovanni's palette, his attempt to rival the art of painting, and the spaces between the individual sections in which the relief was mod eled and fired-deliberately left visible by the conservator-make this work an ideal technical study piece for students. Equally compelling is the serious and benign presence of the bishop saint, still conceived in the spirit of Luca.
