Chapel of the Cross
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Authors
Luca della Robbia
Date
Type
image
Language
Keyword
Crucifixion , St. John the Baptist , St. Augustine , Crucifix , Cross , pinecones
Alternative Title
Abstract
This chapel was built to to serve as a sacrament altar, the house a relic of the True Cross presented to the church of Santa Maria in Impruneta by Pippo Spano, and to mirror the Chapel of the Madonna, which houses the miraculous Madonna of Impruneta. Luca della Robbia created glazed terracotta sculptures of the Crucifixion, in a glazed terracotta classicizing architectural frame, flanked by larger scale reliefs also in glazed terracotta of St. John the Baptist and St. Augustine. Above, the ceiling of the chapel is also in glazed terracotta, with pinecones, which refer to the name of the church (Santa Maria in Pineta) as well as possibly to the sign of the confraternity that performed devotions here. The chapel was made under the patronage of the humanist Antonio degli Agli, who served as the priest in charge in Impruneta from 1439 until his death in 1477. The classical style of the architecture and the figures, executed in the classical medium of terracotta (identified in ancient texts as being a nobly humble medium), is of a piece with Agli's Christian humanism. The rich colourism of the classical architecture (decorated both in relief and with flat painted forms) serves both the elegave the central subject and contrast with the almost exclusively blue and white central scene. (The Della Robbia were never able to create a red glaze, and so red paint may have been added to the surface of the work after glazing, as well as gilding, making the scene more chromatically rich.) The rather diginified figure of Christ is based upon Brunelleschi's crucifix in Santa Maria Novella, his stoicism contrasting with the impassioned contortions of the angels and the only slightly more restrained despair of Mary and John. Andrea della Robbia later made versions of this composition is his larger scale altarpieces in Arezzo and La Verna. This work was badly damaged when the church was hit with a bomb in 1944, and so the nose of St. John the Baptist, much of the body and drapery of St. Augustine, parts of the ceiling tiles, and parts of the cross and background had to be reconstructed. Pre-war photographs show a no-longer extant stucco sculpted frieze ornamenting the chapel. It is not clear why the frieze would not have been made of glazed terracotta, like that of the Chapel of the Madonna opposite. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Description
Santa Maria in Pineta, Impruneta
Citation
John Pope-Hennessy, Luca della Robbia (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980), 50-4, 245-6, cat. 15; Giancarlo Gentilini, I Della Robbia (Florence: Cantini, 1992), I: 131-3; Megan Holmes, The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale UP, 2013), 128-9.