Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio,
'Tobias and the Angel', 1470-80.
London, The National Gallery.

Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s

20 October 1999 - 16 January 2000
Sainsbury Wing


The 1999 Esso exhibition at the National Gallery

This major exhibition looked at the activities of artists during one of the most important and interesting periods in the history of Florence. During the 1470s Lorenzo de' Medici and his allies were working to consolidate their dominance of the city, and the cultivation of the visual arts played a crucial role in asserting this influence. Artists were encouraged to collaborate and compete with each other, and to be innovative in style and technique.

'Renaissance Florence' included works by all the greatest artists working in the city in the 1470s - Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Verrocchio, the Pollaiuolo brothers, Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi - with key loans including a recently discovered Filippino Lippi painting of the 'Dead Christ Mourned' from the Musée Thomas Henry, Cherbourg; the small masterpiece by Botticelli of the 'Discovery of the Dead Holofernes' from the Uffizi; and the exquisite but mysterious 'Ruskin Madonna' from Edinburgh, by the workshop of Verrocchio. These accompanied masterpieces from the Gallery's own collection: 'Tobias and the Angel' from the workshop of Verrocchio, the 'Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian' by Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo, and Botticelli's great 'Venus and Mars'.

As well as paintings and drawings, the exhibition included work in a variety of other media, such as a precious hard stone vase from the Palazzo Pitti, illuminated manuscripts from Holkham Hall and the Bibliothèque Nationale, the famous bronze statuette of Judith from the Detroit Institute of Art, and Verrocchio's poetic sleeping youth in terracotta from Berlin.

Exhibition Catalogue

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