Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Roche and God the Father

Abstract

A recent restoration (completed in 2009) of these terracotta sculptures in the Cappella Spadari of Santissima Annunziata in Arezzo found that the later polychromy covered an original thin transparent layer of beeswax, albumin and silicates directly coating the terracotta, and so the later colouring was removed, revealing mostly unpainted terracotta figures (with the exception of the darkened pupils). These sculptures are late works of Agnolo di Polo, whom Vasari describes as a student of Verrocchio. Agnolo and a few others in the Cinquecento experimented with leaving their terracotta sculptures largely or completely unpainted. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.