File:Verocchio (1904) (14597806468).jpg

Identifier: verocchio00crut (find matches)
Title: Verocchio
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Cruttwell, Maud
Subjects: Verrocchio, Andrea del, 1435?-1488
Publisher: London : Duckworth New York, Scribner
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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the original brushwork isin parts completely lost. The sleeve of the Angel in theforeground, for example, is so thickly coated with dark oilpaint that the elaborate and carefully painted embroiderywhich covered it is scarcely visible. Morelli considered that the entire picture was originallyexecuted in tempera, and that the oil paint is the work ofthe restorer. My own observation leads me to the opinionthat, while the original work was entirely in tempera, thetwo Angels were painted in oil and at the same time partsof the landscape gone over in the same medium. We knowthat Verrocchio was one of the first to adopt the oil-tech-nique, and that his bottega was the trial-ground for allkinds of experiment in the grinding of colours and use ofmediums, Lorenzo di Credi being specially occupied withsuch experiments. Verrocchios later works are all executedin oil, and it is probable that at the date of the additionof the Angels he had definitely adopted it and abandonedthe use of tempera. >
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■*. uZ o -J o < i—i U <W H s EARLIEST WORKS 51 For purposes of argument too much has perhaps heensaid of the defects of this picture, too little of its merit.On the poetic beauty of the Angel there is no need todwell, since it is recognised to the full in its attribution toLeonardo. But it is not only in this figure that Leonardois anticipated. The landscape with its river and distantcrags, while resembling those of Pollaiuolo and evidentlyinspired by him, has an imaginative quality that suggeststhe mysterious background of the Mona Lisa and theS. Anna. This Leonardesque landscape we find again ina painting which, though officially attributed to Leonardohimself, seems rather by analogy of style with his authenti-cated work to be by Verrocchio—the Annunciation ofthe Uffizi (Plate V). This picture was executed for the Altar of the Sacristyof the Convent of Monte Oliveto, near Florence, and whilethere was attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio. On itsremoval to the Gallery at the

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