Workshop of Girolamo della Robbia (1488–1566)

The youngest of the five active sons of Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525), Girolamo was heir to the famed sculptural tradition of his family. Their practice began a century earlier with Girolamo’s great-uncle Luca della Robbia (1399/1400–1482), whom Alberti placed among Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio and Ghiberti as one of the five great artists of the Florentine Renaissance. The technique of glazed terracotta relief sculptures produced in the Della Robbia workshops was first conceived in imitation of ancient marbles, and the popularity of the style kept the family enormously active from the early 15th century through Girolamo’s lifetime.

Girolamo and Luca ‘the Younger’ later established themselves with great success in France, producing glazed terracotta sculpture and decoration at the court of King Francis I. Among his most celebrated works, he carved a marble gisant of Catherine de' Medici, now in the Musée du Louvre. Many of Girolamo's works revert to an almost all white palette (as opposed to his elder brother Giovanni’s more colorful works), that imitates marble and reflects a more sophisticated, classical taste.

A Thermoluminescence Analysis Report prepared by Dr Armel Bouvier of CIRAM in June 2016 states that the date of last firing of the two samples taken was approx. 410 +/- 80 years ago.