Detail View: ADJUNCT MODULE B: ITALIAN ART: Foundling Infants Roundels [restored originals]

Collection: 
ADJUNCT MODULE B: ITALIAN ART
Preferred Title: 
Foundling Infants Roundels [restored originals]
Alternate Title: 
Infants in Swaddling Clothes [restored originals]
Image View: 
Detail, original tondo showing glaze colors
Creator: 
Andrea della Robbia (Italian ceramicist, 1435-ca. 1528)
Location: 
repository: Museo dell'Ospedale degli Innocenti (Florence, Tuscany, Italy)
Location Note: 
Piazza SS. Annunziata, 13; inside the museum
GPS: 
+43.776308+11.261214
Date: 
ca. 1487-1490 (creation)
Cultural Context: 
Italian
Style Period: 
Fifteenth century; Renaissance
Work Type 1: 
tondo
Work Type 2: 
relief (sculpture)
Classification: 
Sculpture and Installations
Material: 
tin-glazed ceramic
Technique: 
casting (process); fabrication attributes: ceramics
Subjects: 
genre; human figure; Restoration and conservation; infants; swaddling clothes; foundlings; babies
Description: 
The façade is made up of nine semicircular arches springing from columns of the Composite order. In the spandrels of the arches there are tin-glazed blue terracotta roundels with reliefs of babies designed by Andrea della Robbia suggesting the function of the building (a foundling orphanage). Ten roundels were installed in ca. 1487, all unique in terms of pose and details of the swaddling clothes. In 1845, 2 additional pairs of "bambini," reproductions of some of the originals, were installed at either end. A few of the tondi are still the original ones, but these surviving original tondi have been moved inside the museum and restored. (Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/)
Collection: 
Adjunct Module B: Italian Art
Identifier: 
6A1-ROBBIA-MI-PSC-B02
Rights: 
© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.