Jacopo della Quercia

Italian sculptor

• Born: c. 1374
• Birthplace: Probably Siena, Republic of Siena (now in Italy)
• Died: October 20, 1438
• Place of death: Siena, Republic of Siena (now in Italy)

Heir to the late Gothic sculptural style of fourteenth century Italy and influenced by the spatial massing of form found in ancient classical art, Jacopo forged an independent, monumental style of great expressive power. Along with Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, and Nanni di Banco, he is considered one of the most significant sculptors working in the early decades of the Italian Renaissance.

Early Life

Although the sculptural commissions executed during the mature career of Jacopo della Quercia (YAWK-oh-poh dayl-lah KWEHR-chah) are amply documented, very little is known about his early life. His father, Piero di Angelo, was a Sienese goldsmith and wood-carver who was married in 1370. Giorgio Vasari, a sixteenth century art historian, has left two versions of Jacopo’s life. In the first version, written in 1550, he attributes to Jacopo an equestrian statue of the condotierre (mercenary military leader) Giovanni d’Arco that was executed in 1391 but is now lost. To receive such a commission, Jacopo would have to have been at least nineteen years of age, placing his birth date around 1371. Vasari’s second version, written in 1568, claims that Jacopo was sixty-four years of age when he died in 1438, which calculates to a slightly later birthdate. What is known for certain is that by 1401, when Jacopo entered the famous competition for the Florentine baptistery doors commission, he must have been a master sculptor of some renown.

The meaning and origins of the name “della Quercia” is a mystery. He was identified by this name as early as the mid-fifteenth century, but early documents refer to him as “Jacopo di Maestro Piero,” after his father, and even later he is occasionally called “Jacopo delle Fonte” in reference to his work on the Fonte Gaia in Siena. It is possible he either inherited the “della Quercia” from his grandfather, or that it refers to a district of Siena in which he was born or lived. It is extremely doubtful that it indicates a birthplace outside Siena.

Jacopo’s early career is the subject of scholarly conjecture. It is safe to assume that, in the tradition of the time, he received his initial training from his father, who worked as a wood-carver. Piero di Angelo did not carve in stone, however, nor was there much activity in that medium in Siena during the last years of the fourteenth century. It is generally accepted that during the 1490’s Jacopo probably traveled to one of the Italian cities where major stone or marble sculptural programs were in progress. The possibilities include Bologna, Milan, or Venice, but theories concerning his activities in any of these cities are purely tentative.

The first firmly documented event in his life is his participation in the competition for the commission to create a set of bronze doors for the baptistery of the cathedral in Florence. Lorenzo Ghiberti won the competition, and Jacopo’s bronze relief competition panel has not survived.

In 1403, Jacopo was in Ferrara, where he began an altar for the Silvestri family, completion of which occurred in 1408. A marble Madonna and Child created for this altar is the earliest extant work universally accepted by scholars as being an example of his style. (Earlier works have been attributed to him, but the attributions are controversial.) During these same years, he also traveled to Lucca to execute the sepulchral monument to Ilaria del Carretto-Guinigi, who died in 1405.

These two youthful works demonstrate a flexibility of expression that would mark his entire career. The Silvestri Madonna is boldly carved, forthright, and monumental. The Ilaria sepulcher, with its graceful effigy and sarcophagus base, presents a quieter, more romantic expression fitting to its subject. In both works, one finds a classical, spatial massing of form coexisting with a rhythmic, elegant line derived from Gothic antecedents.

Life’s Work

In 1408, Jacopo received a commission that would occupy him, on and off, until 1419. That was for the Fonte Gaia in Siena, a large fountain in the center of town, which would serve as a civic focal piece. Contemporary documents indicate that physical work on the fountain did not begin until 1414. The plan of the fountain ultimately included numerous figural and decorative reliefs and statues. The overall scheme, as well as the handling of the human figures and decorative motifs, was heavily influenced by antique classicism. In particular, the high reliefs depicting scenes from Genesis display, despite their badly weathered condition, an unusually well-developed sense of classically inspired physicality and of the potential for form to create emotional expression.

Concurrent with the Sienese project, Jacopo was executing commissions in Lucca. In 1412, Lorenzo Trenta, a wealthy Lucchese merchant, began building a family burial chapel in the Church of San Frediano. Jacopo was put in charge of the project, which was not totally finished until 1422. The archaic gothicisms that flavor the chapel’s tomb markers and altar, especially surprising in the light of the contemporary Fonte Gaia, reflect Jacopo’s willingness and ability to alter his style in the interests of harmonizing his work to the taste and style of its surroundings.

The documentary sources reveal that Jacopo was an ambitious sculptor who rarely refused an important commission. The result was delay and procrastination, as he attempted to juggle his various commitments. For example, while under contract for both the Fonte Gaia and the Trenta chapel, he accepted yet another assignment. In 1417, he was commissioned to make two bronze reliefs for the Siena baptistery font. By 1425, he still had not delivered the reliefs and the Opera del Duomo (cathedral works committee), which had already reassigned one panel to the Florentine sculptor Donatello, sued Jacopo for return of the money advanced. Not until 1430 would Jacopo be paid for completing his relief depicting the Annunciation to Zacchariah. Despite his procrastination, in 1427 he was placed in charge of the entire baptistery font program, perhaps in a bid to secure his attention.

In 1425, Jacopo began work on his most famous sculptural program, the main portal (porta magna) of the Church of San Petronio in Bologna. From then until his death in 1438, he would maintain two workshops, one in Bologna and one in Siena. The Sienese would try to keep him at home with commissions (the Vari-Bentivoglio monument and the Casini altar), fines, and finally, in 1435, an appointment as architect-in-chief of the cathedral works. Despite these demands, Jacopo would make one of his greatest artistic statements in the San Petronio sculpture, where the low relief Old Testament scenes display simplified, monumental compositions and classically rendered human nudes. The Madonna and Child for the project is admired for its handling of spatial massing, and all the sculpture is marked by a rippling, mobile line.

A fairly complete picture of Jacopo the sculptor emerges from the historical and physical evidence of his professional career. He personally traveled to marble quarries to choose the raw material for his projects but had little compunction about leaving major programs in the hands of assistants when other commitments required his absence. The work secured to his hand displays an ability to infuse classical forms with a high level of emotion. His compositions are marked by rhythms of line and form that imbue them with an unmistakable sense of movement. Rarely in sculpture does one find works in which line and mass coexist on such equal footing.

Jacopo is considered an independent artist, partly because his career took place outside of Florence, the major Italian center for sculpture in the early fifteenth century. He was well aware of the achievements of the Florentine artists but forged a different, almost idiosyncratic, style connected to theirs but, at the same time, separate. The Florentine achievements in pictorial space, for example, never really concerned Jacopo. His emphasis was always on the heroically scaled foreground figures. Backgrounds and details were reduced to a minimum. His insistent, rippling line, at times poetic and at other times nervous and expressive, defined outlines and contours and had no equivalent among his major contemporaries.

The picture of Jacopo the man is less complete. Little is known about his private life. An impending marriage is recorded in 1424, but there is no evidence that it took place and neither a wife nor children were mentioned in his will. In 1413, he was involved in an affair with the wife of a wealthy Lucchese merchant, and that year, he and one of his assistants were accused of theft, rape, and sodomy. The assistant spent several years in prison, but Jacopo escaped Lucca, only returning on receipt of safe conduct in 1416. This event did not seem to affect either his professional or social position. In 1418 and 1435, he was elected to the Sienese City Council, and in 1420, he was chosen to serve as the prior of his district in Siena. His inimitable style seems to have secured for him a fair degree of wealth, position, and protection. It certainly secured for him a prominent place in the history of art.

Significance

Although Jacopo exerted some stylistic influence during his career and immediately after his death, full appreciation of his legacy did not develop until one hundred years later. In the late fifteenth century, another sculptor, also an independent and also fascinated by the expressive possibilities of form and heroic physicality, would be greatly impressed by exposure to Jacopo’s work. That sculptor was Michelangelo. That Michelangelo studied Jacopo’s sculpture is proved not only by historical documentation but also by the frequent quotations of Jacopo’s San Petronio reliefs in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel paintings. In Jacopo, Michelangelo found a stylistic ancestor. In Michelangelo, Jacopo’s experiments in heroic form found their fulfillment.

A study of Jacopo’s sculpture forces the viewer to confront the complexities of artistic style at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance . The Gothic style had not disappeared overnight. The forms and techniques of ancient classical art were not revived indiscriminately. The two traditions had been influencing Italian sculptors since the mid-thirteenth century, and they continued to coexist in Jacopo’s work. Jacopo’s responses to these traditions, however, were personal and independent. Gothic line and classical form were reinterpreted to ends that were expressive without being expressionistic and were classical without being revivalistic.

Bibliography

Beck, James. Jacopo della Quercia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. 2 vols. A biography of thenoted sculptor. Illustrated, with bibliography and index.

Beck, James, and Auerlio Amendola. Ilaria del Carretto di Jacopo Della Quercia. Milano, Italy: Silvana Editoriale, 1988. A look at Jacopo’s work on the Ilaria del Carretto tomb. In English and Italian.

Hanson, Anne Coffin. Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1965. A monograph on one of Jacopo’s most important commissions, giving special emphasis to the fountain’s iconographic program and its joint civic and religious function.

Pope-Hennessy, John. Italian Gothic Sculpture. 4th ed. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. The chapter on Jacopo places him at the end of the development of late Gothic Italian sculpture. Comparative photographs support the often-neglected stylistic ties of Jacopo to this older tradition. Includes critical analysis, biographical and bibliographical summaries, an index, and photographs of major works with accompanying catalog entries.

Seymour, Charles. Jacopo della Quercia: Sculptor. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973. Discusses the documentary evidence of the major works and includes insightful critical commentary. Ample photographic reproductions including many details. Includes a chronological compendium of the documents, as well as the actual text of major contracts (not translated). Includes an index and a selected bibliography.

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Reprint. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. A translation of the 1568 edition of Vasari’s biographies. An expanded biography of Jacopo, based most likely on oral tradition.