Painting
Despite the importance of Verrocchio's workshop in the training of younger painters, very few paintings are universally recognised as his own work and there are many problems of attribution.
A small painting of the Madonna with seated child in tempera on panel (now in the Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin) is considered an early work of 1468/70.
A painting in the National Gallery in London (cat. no.NG2508) of the Virgin and Child with two angels in tempera on panel, which has not previously been attributed to Verrocchio, was cleaned and restored about 2010 and is now attributed to him with a date of about 1467/69.
A small painting on panel of Tobias setting out on his journey with the Archangel Raphael, carrying the fish with which he was to heal his father's blindness, was probably painted as a private devotional picture. It is an early work which has formerly been attributed to Pollaiuolo and other artists. Covi thinks that it was probably painted with assistance from Ghirlandaio. It is now in London at the National Gallery.
The Baptism of Christ, now in the Uffizi at Florence, was painted in 1474-75. In this work Verrocchio was assisted by Leonardo da Vinci, then a youth and a member of his workshop, who painted the angel on the left and the part of the background above. According to Vasari, Andrea resolved never to touch the brush again because Leonardo, his pupil, had far surpassed him, but later critics consider this story apocryphal.
The Madonna enthroned with John the Baptist and St Donato is in the Cathedral at Pistoia. It had been left unfinished and was completed by Lorenzo di Credi when Verrocchio was in Venice near the end of his life.
Read more about this topic: Andrea Del Verrocchio
Famous quotes containing the word painting:
“Now at least we know everything that painting isn’t.”
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
“One is conscious of no brave and noble earnestness in it, of no generalized passion for intellectual and spiritual adventure, of no organized determination to think things out. What is there is a highly self-conscious and insipid correctness, a bloodless respectability submergence of matter in manner—in brief, what is there is the feeble, uninspiring quality of German painting and English music.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)