Sculpting with Color

in Renaissance Florence

The Della Robbia Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art

LECTURE

Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture at the National Gallery of Art, presents a lecture on the first comprehensive exhibition of Della Robbia glazed terracotta sculpture in the United States. Originating at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the show has taken new form at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from February 5 through June 4, 2017.

Installed amid the light-filled architectural spaces designed by John Russell Pope based on ancient Roman and Renaissance models, the exhibition focuses on the new art form that emerged in fifteenth- century Florence through the genius of Luca della Robbia. Exalting a humble material, clay, through brilliant modeling and surfaces shining with time-defying color, Luca created sculpture of a kind unknown to the ancients, legible at great distances, suitable for both indoor and outdoor display and, as Vasari wrote, “almost eternal (quasi eterne)”.

DOORS OPEN BETWEEN 5:30PM AND 5:55PM