Lot Essay
This lot is sold with a Thermoluminescence Analysis from Oxford reporting that the material from the sample was last fired between 330 and 500 years ago.
Marquand believes that Benedetto Buglioni (1459/60-1520) was strongly influenced by Antonio Rossellino, and states that Vasari records that Buglioni "secured the secret of glazing terra-cotta from a woman in the house of Andrea della Robbia" (cf. Marquand, op. cit., p. xiii). The present terracotta is very similar to that in a group of the Annunciation in the church of San Jacopo at Borgo a Mozzano, illustrated by Marquand and placed chronologically in the first decade of the 16th Century. Gabriel's right hand is set more vertically in the present example, and the folds of his robe are more complex, but the colours used are the same.
Marquand believes that Benedetto Buglioni (1459/60-1520) was strongly influenced by Antonio Rossellino, and states that Vasari records that Buglioni "secured the secret of glazing terra-cotta from a woman in the house of Andrea della Robbia" (cf. Marquand, op. cit., p. xiii). The present terracotta is very similar to that in a group of the Annunciation in the church of San Jacopo at Borgo a Mozzano, illustrated by Marquand and placed chronologically in the first decade of the 16th Century. Gabriel's right hand is set more vertically in the present example, and the folds of his robe are more complex, but the colours used are the same.