Renaissance People

Who is Pietro Torrigiano?

Here is a clue: he broke someone's nose.
Then he left Italy.
He is not as famous as the person's nose he broke.
All because he never worked in Carrara marble.
Photograph by Anual

Instead he used common muck. Terracotta. In fact, he was an amazingly talented sculptor, who made very organic and dynamic figures, like this Saint Jerome. He was astoundingly realistic for a Renaissance man. He did not try to imitate the classics like his contemporaries - *who got it all wrong anyway* with their pristine white gods!

It turns out the Greeks painted their statues in gaudy colours!

Trojan archer- Stiftung Archäologie, Munich

Another undervalued artist, who lived before Torrigiani, unappreciated in his own time, again, mainly for not working in the classy, classic medium of marble, but using - actually the much warmer and more humanly scaled - terracotta, way ahead of his time with his most unusual "compianto" pieces (a kind of installation of biblical characters) is Niccolo dell' Arca (c. 1435-1440 – 2 March 1494).

Check out the hysterical women literally rushing towards the prostrate dead Christ (also in the composition on the ground before them). ▼ [detail of the lamentation, photo by sailko]

Pietro Torrigiani (1472-1528) was the man who broke the nose of the guy who made this famous but amazingly tricky composition of the Pietà.

If you thought it was easy to put a grown man in a mother's lap, see how wrong you can get it:

The Avignon Pieta, 1450-60, snaps the Christ virtually in a fish posture back bend.

Palma il Giovane (1548/50–1628) makes Christ too muscular and large to even try and fit him on Mary's lap

Botticelli's Madonna is struggling to keep a grip on her son!

Pietro Perugino sorts out the balancing act by propping his corpse up with the help of St. John the Baptist (made between 1481-1493).

Torrigiano was definitely a great artist, and he felt himself to be a rival of Michelangelo; he was also a hot-head. In the end it got him into a lot of trouble, when he lived in Spain. He was picked up there by the inquisition, and after a lot of nastiness condemned to death. A rebel with no particular cause. Just a fiery artist (get the pun? Terracotta needs to be fired in a hot oven!)

Thank you to the gift that is art!
Thank you to the classics and the masters who went before us to inspire and enrich our life!
Happy studying, dear friends!