These works were used for altar-pieces, medallions on exteriors, fountains, wall decoration, and a great variety of purposes. Twelve medallions representing the months, which are in the South Kensington Museum, are said to have been made by Luca to decorate a writing cabinet for one of the Medici.
Luca worked with his nephew, Andrea, who had four sons; and when Luca died his secrets belonged to them, and made their fortunes. They were occupied eleven years in making a frieze to a hospital in Pistoja; it represented the Seven Acts of Mercy. One of them went to France and decorated the Château of Madrid for Francis I. Pope Leo X. employed another to pave the Loggie of the Vatican with Robbia tiles, and these wares, in one form and another, were used in numberless ways, both useful and decorative.
The Robbia family was followed by other workers in glazed ware, and during about a century it was a prominent feature in art, and then was gradually given up.
The most noted pupil of Donatello was ANDREA DEL VEROCCHIO (1432-1488). He was born at Florence, and was early apprenticed to a goldsmith called Verocchio, from whom the sculptor took his surname. It is said that this name came from the fact that the elder Verocchio had remarkable exactness of sight.
Neither the metal works nor the paintings which Verocchio did remain, and after about 1466 he devoted himself entirely to sculpture. It is difficult to associate him with Donatello; his execution is finished like most sculptors who were also metal-workers; his nude parts are true to nature, but not graceful or attractive, and his draperies are in small folds, which give a tumbled, crumpled effect rather than that of the easy, graceful falling of soft material.
His best works are a David in the Museum of the Bargello, Florence; a bronze Genius pressing a Dolphin to itself on a fountain in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio (Fig. 87); an equestrian statue of Colleoni before the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo, Venice (Fig. 88); and a group of St. Thomas examining the Wounds of Christ at the Church of Or San Michele, Florence. This last work is in his best and latest manner; the expression is powerful, but the drapery is still very faulty.