Benedetto Buglioni, St. Mary of Egypt, Photographed by Una D’Elia
Luca Della Robbia, Visitation, Photographed by Rachel Boyd
Benedetto Buglioni, St. Mary of Egypt, Photographed by Una D’Elia
Giovanni Della Robbia, St. Anne Presents the Immaculate Virgin with St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua. Photograph by Una D’Elia.
When glazed terracotta sculptures first appeard in the fifteenth century, they were celebrated as a new invention and accredited to a single man, Luca Della Robbia. This new technique was so popular that the Della Robbia family name would become synonymous with this innovative method of polychromy. Not only did Luca Della Robbia invent this means of colouring sculptures but he also managed to keep the glaze recipe a family secret. The Della Robbia’s received great success in the 1440s, as they had not only obtained local customers (clay was a relatively affordable medium), but it is also recorded that Luca had commissions from as far as Portugal and France and from important patrons such as the Medici. The 1450s saw the entrance of Luca’s nephew and heir Andrea Della Robbia, whose son Giovanni would continue the family business. Despite Luca’s attempts to keep the glaze recipe within the family, the Buligioni would too come to produce sculptures in glazed terracotta, their workshop opening sometime near the end of the fifteenth century. In fact, the founder of the Buglioni glazed terracotta business, Benedetto Buglioni, worked in Andrea Della Robbia’s workshop, and this is most likely where he learned of the glaze recipe.
What is glazed terracotta and how was it made?
Glazed terracotta was considered to be similar to glass making, and in many ways it is. “Both mediums are based on melting silica, with the addition of fluxes and other supplementary ingredients,.. and both use the same mineral oxides such as colorants” (Kupiec 55). Glazes “consisted of two main components, the marzacotto and the calcine. Marzacotto provided the glassy element of the glaze, consisting of silica from sand and an alkali flux from natron or wine lees. Calcina gave the glaze opacity and flow, and was made by combining tin and lead. Then metal oxides were added to pigment” (Kupiec 63).
See chart below for breakdown of components.
| Marzacotto | Calcine | Pigments (colours) |
– element that made glassy shine – partly made of silica (sand) – partly made from alkali flux which is wine lees (wine sediment) | – gave the glaze the opacity and flow – partly made from powdered tin – partly made from powdered lead | – colours were made by grinding metals/ minerals and adding them to the marzacotto and calcine mix |
The Process
- Collect clay from riverbed, cave, pit or have it quarried
- Remove impurities from clay by grinding or pounding
- Sculpt/mold clay (depending on whether the statue is freestanding or relief)
- Important to note that keeping clay wet while sculpting makes it easier to shape
- Upon completion of sculpting the clay is left to dry and then fired in the kiln (baked)
- After initial firing, the glazes (which were made beforehand) are mixed with water and applied to the sculpture
- The sculpture absorbs the water and the glazes will turn powdery
- The sculpture is fired again, making the glazes molten (like glass) which gives the statues their shiny finishes!
Bibliography
Pope-Hennessy, John. An Introduction to Italian Sculpture. 3 vols. London: Phaidon, 1955-1963. NB611.P82; Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. London: Dent, 1963. Vols. 1-4. N6922.V48 1963; Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Trans. John R. Spencer. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale, 1966; Manetti, Antonio di Tuccio. The Life of Brunelleschi. Ed. Howard Saalman, and trans. Catherine Enggass. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970. NA1123.B89 M3; Marquand, Allan. Andrea della Robbia and his Atelier. New York: Hacker, 1972. NB623.R713 M3 1972; Marquand, Allan. Benedetto and Santi Buglioni. New York: Hacker, 1972. NB623.B8 M3 1972; Pope-Hennessy, John. Luca della Robbia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1980. NB623 .R72 P66 1980; Kingery, W. David and Meredith Aronson. “Archeometria: The Glazes of Luca della Robbia.” Faenza 76 (1990): pp. 221-5; Gage, John. Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999; Dunlop, Anne. “Materials, Origins, and the Nature of Early Italian Painting.” In Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence, ed. Jaynie Anderson. Carleton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2009, pp. 472-6. N72.G55 C76 2008; Kupiec, Catherine Lee. “The Materiality of Luca Della Robbia’s Glazed Terracotta Sculptures.” Order No. 10508644, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick, 2016. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.queensu.ca/docview/1878890984?accountid=6180; D’Elia, Dr. Una, Dr. Heather Merla, and Rachel Boyd. St. Mary of Egypt. Photographs. Kingston, Ontario. Queen’s University. Accessed October 8, 2019. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24788; D’Elia, Dr. Una, Dr. Heather Merla, and Rachel Boyd. Visitation. Photographs. Kingston, Ontario. Queen’s University. Accessed October 8, 2019. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24788; D’Elia, Dr. Una, Dr. Heather Merla, and Rachel Boyd. St. Anne Presents the Immaculate Virgin with St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua. Photographs. Kingston, Ontario. Queen’s University. Accessed October 8, 2019. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24788; D’Elia, Dr. Una, Dr. Heather Merla, and Rachel Boyd. “Renaissance Polychrome Sculpture in Tuscany.” Kingston, Ontario. Queen’s University. Accessed October 8, 2019. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24788
Locating the Materials of Italian Renaissance Sculpture 