iThe Metropolitan Museum of ArtUpper East Side
Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met
Results from a collaborative exchange among curators, conservators, and digital specialists studying The Met's Della Robbia sculptures.
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Only half of the Marquand Altarpiece is on show. The rest is unrestored. Thirty-three of its 66 glazed sections stand in front of a graphic outline of the whole, beside an animated 3D reconstruction that builds the 10-foot altar piece by piece. It was last on view in the 1950s.
It's one gallery of 16 works, most out of storage for the first time in decades, from three generations of the Florentine family that invented glazed terracotta around 1440. Up close you can find the seams, hidden along the outlines, where big works were fired in sections. Moulded in multiples, weatherproof and cheaper than marble, this was the flat-pack version of Renaissance sculpture, and it still gleams.
Santa Fe dealer Gerald Stiebel noted it opened without the Met's usual hoopla, and called it a presentation "one would think you could only see in Italy". It's in Gallery 521, free with Museum admission, through January 2028. Met Expert Talks on it run 13 October and 9 February 2027, 3pm.
Look for
The Marquand Altarpiece
Andrea's Assumption of the Virgin, ca. 1485: 33 newly conserved glazed sections set against a graphic rendering of the full ten-by-seven-foot altar.
The animated reconstruction
A large video built from 3D scans assembles the whole altarpiece and suggests the order the workshop put it together in.
Two generations, two palettes
Andrea's Saint Michael the Archangel hangs beside Giovanni's newly gifted Mystic Mandorla, to show the brighter range of colours Giovanni brought to the family's glazes.
Dovizia and St. Michael statuettes
The same basic figure reworked twice: Dovizia raises a hand to steady a platter of fruit, while Saint Michael swings a sword over a writhing dragon.
The bust of François I
The king of France in glazed terracotta, 1529, the only known Della Robbia portrait whose sitter was both a contemporary and firmly identified.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want a blockbuster: it's one gallery of 16 works, and the altarpiece is only half there.
Also at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Image credits
9
- Rediscovering Della Robbia at The MetCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Collection in Focus: Modern European CurrentsPhoto: Ariel Ione Williams, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to NowCourtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- Taryn Simon | Father Country I Do Love YouCourtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- The Metropolitan Museum of ArtHugo Schneider, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Neue Galerie New YorkFrancesca.hyanna19 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumAjay Suresh, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design MuseumEpicgenius, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- American Museum of Natural HistoryIngfbruno, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0