worked, and becomes indurated by time and exposure to the air. Girolamo della Robbia laboured much in Orleans, and executed many works in various parts of the whole realm of France, acquiring high reputation and great riches. But after a time, understanding that the only brother now remaining to him in Florence was Luca, while he was himself alone in the service of the French king, and very wealthy, he invited his brother to join him in those parts, hoping to leave him the successor of his own prosperous condition and high credit. But the matter did not proceed thus. Luca died soon after his arrival in France, and Girolamo found himself once more alone and with none of his kin beside him. He then resolved to return to his native land, and there enjoy the riches acquired by his pains and labours, desiring moreover to leave some memorial of himself in his own country. In the year 1553 he established his dwelling in Florence accordingly, but was in a manner compelled to change his purpose, seeing that duke Cosmo, by whom he had hoped to be honourably employed, was entirely occupied by the war in Siena: he therefore returned to die in France, when not only did his house remain closed and his family become extinct,[1] but art was at the same time deprived of the true method of working in the glazed terra-cotta. It is true that there were some who made attempts in this kind of sculpture after his decease, but no one of these artists ever approached the excellence of Luca the elder, of Andrea, and the other masters of that family in the branch of art of which we are now speaking.[2] Wherefore, if I have expatiated at some length on this subject, or said more than may have seemed needful, let my readers excuse me, since the fact that Luca invented this mode of sculpture, which had not been practised—so far as I
- ↑ See Baldinucci, who shews that Vasari is here in error. The Della Robbia family flourished most honourably, both in France and Florence, until the year 1645, the last of the name being Bishop of Cortona and Fiesole. —Schorn.
- ↑ The secret of these inventions was transmitted to the Buglioni family by the marriage of a Della Robbia with Andrea Benedetto Buglioni. Andrea was contemporary with Verrocchio; and his son, Santi Buglioni, inherited the secret, which in him, as it appears, was totally lost, although many attempted to discover the methods adopted (according to Baldinucci, who relates this), more particularly a certain Antonio Novello, but he was far from attaining to the excellence of the Della Robbia family.
