The Annunciation

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Abstract

This glazed terracotta lunette of the Annunciation is currently immured in the main cloister of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence. Originally, it formed part of a multi-media altarpiece in a chapel of the hospital church. The patron of this chapel, constructed in 1491, was Piero del Pugliese, a merchant and member of the Arte della Seta, the guild that was the patron of the hospital itself. The Della Robbia lunette crowned a panel of the Virgin and Child with Saints by Piero di Cosimo (now in the hospital museum), and both objects may have been framed by a cornice of glazed terracotta cherub heads, also by Andrea della Robbia. Cavazzini has advanced the theory that two Della Robbia angels now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (and sold by the hospital in 1853) also formed part of the original ensemble. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence; Del Pugliese Chapel, Church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti, Florence

Citation

Allan Marquand, Andrea della Robbia and His Atelier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1922), 1: 115-16; John Pope-Hennessy, "Thoughts on Andrea della Robbia," in The Study and Criticism of Italian Sculpture (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980), 161-2; Giancarlo Gentilini, I Della Robbia: La scultura invetriata nel Rinascimento (Florence: Cantini, 1992), 1: 216; Laura Cavazzini, "Dipinti e sculture nelle chiese dell'Ospedale," in Lucia Sandri, ed., Gli Innocenti e Firenze nei secoli. Un ospedale, un archivio, una città (Florence, 1996), 121-23.

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