Verrocchio. Master of Leonardo

The exhibitionVerrocchio, Master of Leonardoat Palazzo Strozzi, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, celebrates the figure of an artist who was the gifted interpreter of Renaissance values in the Medici Florence of Cosimo the Elder, Piero and Lorenzo the Magnificent. With his workshop and his many-sided activities, he influenced a whole generation of artists in Italy and Europe.The exhibition catalogue, published by Marsilio, opens with an album of black and white images of Verrocchio's monumental masterpieces that are not in the exhibition because it is impossible to move them from their present locations, and with essays by the two curators, who provide a masterly reconstruction of his versatile and unflagging artistic creativity. Francesco Caglioti brings out the complexity of the figure of Verrocchio as sculptor, analysing his training, the figurative genres in which he worked, his students and followers. Andrea De Marchi examines Verrocchio's output of paintings and the fundamental influence he exerted on some of the finest artists of the Florentine Quattrocento, from Bartolomeo della Gatta to Perugino, from Ghirlandaio to Lorenzo di Credi and the great Leonardo.The catalogue of works is divided into eleven sections that reflect the exhibition layout, creating a constant counterpoint between marble sculptures, bronze figures, works in terracotta and other plastic materials, paintings and drawings. In this way, amid autograph works by Verrocchio and the activities of his many pupils, followers and imitators, it presents us with a fresco of a whole age.The volume closes with the full and richly documented bibliography compiled by Francesco Caglioti.