Book contents
- Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop
- Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Verrocchio Experimentalist
- 1 Verrocchio's Ingenuity
- 2 Verrocchio's Medici Tomb: Art as Treatise
- 3 Bridging Dimensions: Verrocchio's Christ and Saint Thomas as Absent Presence
- 4 The Sculptured Imagination
- 5 Material Meditations in Verrocchio's Bargello Crucifix
- Conclusion
- A Note on Archival Sources
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
4 - The Sculptured Imagination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2019
- Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop
- Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Verrocchio Experimentalist
- 1 Verrocchio's Ingenuity
- 2 Verrocchio's Medici Tomb: Art as Treatise
- 3 Bridging Dimensions: Verrocchio's Christ and Saint Thomas as Absent Presence
- 4 The Sculptured Imagination
- 5 Material Meditations in Verrocchio's Bargello Crucifix
- Conclusion
- A Note on Archival Sources
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Verrocchio’s black chalk drawing, the Ideal Head of a Young Woman, is an early example of the use of sfumato in Renaissance drawing. It is argued that the use of sfumato within the forms and not for the outline is deliberate, serving to suggest that the drawing represents a marble relief sculpture coming to life. The artist’s use of sfumato within the outlines to represent a marble relief sculpture coming to life (or vice versa) to suggest how perception through the senses is equivalent to intellectual knowledge. A portrait of the poet’s beloved, of the idea of love, and of the poetic imagination as if sculptured.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance WorkshopVerrocchio and the Epistemology of Making Art, pp. 152 - 167Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019