Della Robbia in Casentino, Arezzo, Tuscany

In Florence, for about one century, a family of great Tuscan potters worked: the Della Robbia.
The initiator and the most artistically remarkable figure of this activity was Luca Della Robbia who around 1440 realized the first glazed terracottas known as “terracotte robbiane”. A follower of the activity was Luca’s nephew, Andrea Della Robbia who was mostly inspired by the teacher, in the plasticity and in the colours of the works, generally white and blue. Then Andrea’s children will continue this high art, in particular Giovanni. The Della Robbia also used a lot of collaborators, that's why the works are often attributed not to a precise author, but to the shop of the Della Robbia. Benedetto and Santi Buglioni are instead authors of the school Della Robbia, but they realized on their own their works in the first decades of the XVI century. Because of political, business, cultural and logistic reasons, the Casentino has always been very close to Florence. Surely it depends on this bond if in Casentino there are almost fifty works by Della Robbia and the school. One third of these works is placed in La Verna, very close to Florence. One of the masterpieces by Andrea Della Robbia, the Annunciation, is kept in the Basilica of the Santuario Francescano of the Casentino. The characters represented in these ceramics change expression according to the point of observation and the direction of the light by which they are illuminated. For this reason the details of the terracottas of the Della Robbia are often more fascinating than the work as a whole.