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Andrea Del Verrocchio's Doubting Thomas Andrea del Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas: Three Encounters Per Rumberg Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in the History of Art The Courtauld Institute of Art University of London 2016 Abstract This thesis presents three historical encounters with Andrea del Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas, looking at fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources, its critical history, particularly in the nineteenth century, and the way it was depicted in reproductive prints and early photographs. It revisits the association of the Doubting Thomas with summary justice at the time Verrocchio devised his group, as well as the way the artist responded to it. The inscription of Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas did not cite Franco Sacchetti’s verses, which usually accompanied depictions of the Doubting Thomas in Florence, but the Gospel of John as well as an antiphon for the feast day of Saint Thomas, thus firmly locating the group in a liturgical rather than a civic context. The evolution of the naming of Verrocchio’s group reveals an intriguing insight into its reception. While the documents relating to the commission emphasised the figure of Christ, Giorgio Vasari shifted the attention from Christ to Thomas, describing the latter as the protagonist of the scene and explicitly mentioning his ‘doubting’. A reproductive engraving in Jean Baptiste Seroux d’Agincourt’s Histoire de l’art par les monumens and a group of early photographs by Brogi, Alinari and Giuseppe Jacquier were the earliest depictions of Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas in an art historical context. None of these reproductions, showing the tabernacle from a slightly elevated and supposedly ‘neutral’ point of view, take into account the way we encounter the group at Orsanmichele. Only a series of photographs from different viewpoints can illustrate how the narrative’s drama of Verrocchio’s composition unfolds as one walks past the tabernacle at Orsanmichele, culminating in the detail of Thomas’s hand, which does not actually touch the wound in Christ’s side. The power of Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas lies in the way it adopts the ambivalent nature of the narrative in the Gospel of Saint John. For Willa, Oscar and Ferdinand I now see well: we cannot satisfy our mind unless it is enlightened by the truth beyond whose boundary no truth lies. Mind, reaching that truth, rests within it as a beast within its lair; mind can attain that truth if not, all our desires were vain. Therefore, our doubting blossoms like a shoot out from the root of truth; this natural urge spurs us toward the peak, from height to height. Dante, The Divine Comedy Paradiso, IV, 124-32 Contents Introduction (7) Florence and the Doubting Thomas (8) Commission (10) Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas (13) Three Encounters (14) Note on Naming (17) First Encounter Chapter I The Doubting Thomas as a Symbol of Justice (19) The Palazzo della Signoria (20) Franco Sacchetti (22) Touching the Truth (24) Scarperia (29) ‘ET SALVATOR GENTIUM’ (30) Chapter II The Mercanzia and the Doubting Thomas (34) The Mercanzia Altarpiece (35) Giovanni Toscani’s Doubting Thomas (37) ‘Nicolum Franchi Sachetti’ (41) Chapter III Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas and the Pazzi Conspiracy (43) April 1478 (44) The Lex Gismondina (47) The Presentation Copy (49) Believing Quickly (51) Second Encounter Chapter IV Vasari and the Dialogue of History (55) Vasari and Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas (57) Naming (60) A Silent Dialogue (61) Chapter V Verrocchio and the Question of Attribution (67) Verrocchio’s Oeuvre (69) The Riddle of the Sphinx (73) A Clean Sweep (78) ‘The truth as we severally see it’ (80) Chapter VI Verrocchio and the Drapery Studies on Linen (86) Verrocchio’s Draperies (87) Drapery Studies on Linen (92) Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas and the Study of Drapery (96) Third Encounter Chapter VII Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas before Photography (101) The Allegory of Maternal Love (103) Picturing Vasari: Verrocchio in Print (105) In the Guise of Caravaggio (110) Chapter VIII Early Photographs of Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas (114) Alinari and Brogi (115) Early Collections of Photographs (120) The First Photographs of Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas (125) Cavalcaselle and Orsanmichele (127) Chapter IX Encountering Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas (130) Heinrich Wölfflin and the Feral Eye (131) Clarence Kennedy and the Pencil of Light (136) Clarence Ward and the Tourist View (138) ‘Only connect!’ (139) Conclusion (144) Images (147) List of Images (228) Appendix (241) Bibliography (272) Acknowledgements (312) Introduction On Saturday, 21 June 1483, Andrea del Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas (Fig. 1) was installed in the central tabernacle of the east façade of the church of Orsanmichele in Florence (Fig. 2).1 A contemporary, the apothecary Lucca Landucci, recorded the event in his diary: On 21 June 1483, there was placed, in a tabernacle in Orsanmichele, that Saint Thomas to Christ’s side, and the Christ in bronze, which is the most beautiful thing imaginable, and the finest head of the Saviour that has yet been made, by the hands of Andrea del Verrocchio.2 The date implies that the unveiling of Verrocchio’s bronze was carefully orchestrated. 21 June anticipated the feast day of Saint Thomas on 21 December by precisely six months. What is more, the date fell on the week of the celebrations of Saint John the Baptist, arguably the most important occasion in the Florentine calendar. The installation of the two figures had long been anticipated. Verrocchio had worked on them for over fifteen years. Only a few weeks earlier, on 28 May 1483, an altarpiece with a very different depiction of Saint Thomas had arrived in Florence. Tommaso Portinari, who worked for the Medici bank in Bruges, had commissioned the triptych for his family chapel in the church of Sant’Egidio at Santa Maria Nuova from the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes.3 1 The photographs are my own. 2 The translation is my own. See also Landucci, trans. Rosen Jervis 1927, pp. 37-8. ‘E a dì 21 di giugnio 1483, si pose in un tabernacolo d’Orto Sa’ Michele quel San Tomaso a lato a Giesù, e ‘l Giesù di bronzo, el quale è la più bella cosa che si truovi, e la più bella testa del Salvatore ch’ancora si sia fatta, per le mani di Andrea del Verrocchio.’ Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena, K.XI.25. See Landucci, ed. Badia 1883, p. 45. See also Appendix 3. 3 See Nuttall 2004, pp. 60-4. The arrival is documented in the accounts for the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, first published in Hatfield Strens 1968, pp. 318-19. (7) The so-called Portinari Altarpiece, now at the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, shows the Adoration of the Shepherds flanked by the donor and his wife with their children and their patron saints.4 To the left, Tommaso is seen with his sons Antonio and Pigello, Saint Anthony Abbott, as well as his patron saint: Thomas (Fig. 3). Unlike Hugo van der Goes, who had never visited Florence and died before his altarpiece reached its destination, Verrocchio would have been familiar with representations of Saint Thomas in Florence, in particular the Doubting Thomas. In this thesis, I will propose three historical encounters with Verrocchio’s Doubting Thomas in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of the tradition Verrocchio was responding to, how he responded to it and how his response was received over the following centuries. Florence and the Doubting Thomas The Doubting Thomas was a prominent subject in Florence at the time, and depictions of it could be seen across town. In 1441, Tommaso Spinelli had commissioned a fresco of his patron saint from Stefano d’Antonio Vanni for the facade of the convent of Santa Croce, overlooking the piazza.5 The no longer extant fresco can be glimpsed in the background of a print in Giuseppe Richa’s Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine (Fig. 4).6 One of Taddeo Gaddi’s panels of the Sacristy Cupboard at Santa Croce, now at the Galleria dell’ Accademia in Florence, provides an idea of what the composition may have looked like (Fig. 5).7 The panel shows Christ in the centre of the composition, surrounded by the apostles. Thomas is shown to the left as he touches the wound in Christ’s side. Similar compositions could be found all over Florence, usually within the context of scenes depicting the Passion of Christ, as on the Santa Croce Sacristy Cupboard, but they also appeared in their own right, as on the façade of the church. 4 Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, 3191-3. 5 See Jacks and Caffero 2001, p. 148. 6 Richa 1754-62, vol. I, facing p. 35. Engraved after a drawing by Michele Zucchi. 7 Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, 8593. (8) Another prominent fresco of the Doubting Thomas, dating from the mid-fifteenth century, is recorded in an anecdote from Giorgio Vasari’s Life of Paolo Uccello, where Donatello ridicules it. It is said that, having been commissioned to paint over the door of S. Tommaso in the Mercato Vecchio, that Saint feeling for the wound in the side of Christ, Paolo put into that work all the effort that he could, saying that he wished to show therein the full extent of his worth and knowledge; and so he caused a screen of planks to be made, to the end that no one might be able to see his work until it was finished. Wherefore Donato, meeting him one day all alone, said to him: ‘And what sort of work may this be of thine, that thou keepest it screened so closely?’ And Paolo said in answer: ‘Thou shalt see.
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