Saturday, February 27, 2021 It was an absolute delight to welcome Marietta Cambareri, Senior Curator of European Sculpture and Phillips Curator of Judaica, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to discuss one of my favorite Florentine artists, Luca della Robbia! Born in Florence in 1400, at the dawn of the Renaissance, Luca della Robbia developed an innovative technique for applying brilliant, reflective color to terracotta sculpture. Giorgio Vasari praised him for this invention, which made terracotta sculpture “almost eternal”. The secrets of this technique were passed down within the Della Robbia family for generations, and still remain a mystery even today.
Marietta shared behind-the -scenes stories as well as some of the exciting conservation work done in preparation for the show she curated in 2016-17, Della Robbia: Sculpting in Color in Renaissance Florence (MFA, Boston and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)