Luca della Robbia, The Visitation, 1440

Luca della Robbia’s Visitation portrays a tender greeting between the Virgin Mary and St. Elizabeth. The story of the Visitation, as told in the Meditations on the Life of Christ, a meditation handbook popular in the Renaissance, recounts Mary’s journey to visit her cousin St. Elizabeth. Mary is “accompanied by poverty, humility and shame and all the honest virtues.” She is pregnant with Jesus Christ and Elizabeth with St. John the Baptist. Elizabeth bows to Mary even though she is of a higher status as an older woman. Della Robbia has created a white, life size, glazed terracotta sculpture in the round. This  Visitation scene was made for San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia, where it currently resides in a niche within the church. However, primary documents from the church record a tabernacle, which suggests the sculpture was originally in a different location, perhaps on top of an altar. Additional documents record the purchase of an oil lamp that would have been placed in front of the sculpture as well as a veil that would have been removed for feast day celebrations.

Men, women, and children would interact differently with a gleaming white, life-sized, terracotta sculpture than they would with other depictions of the Visitation. Della Robbia created a sculpture, which is unlike many of the other previous renditions of Visitation scenes. Prior depictions were usually small paintings that were part of an altarpiece. Mary and St. Elizabeth are traditionally shown both standing in an embrace, holding eachother by their arms, leaving some distance between them. Usually Elizabeth bends only slightly lower than Mary and is shown as a few years older. Della Robbia changed many aspects in his interpretation of the Visitation scene. He created a white, life-sized sculpture in glazed terracotta, instead of a small painting. He chose to place St. Elizabeth in a kneeling position. Della Robbia sculpted Mary as a very young girl and St. Elizabeth as an elderly woman. Likewise, in Della Robbia’s sculpture, the figures are unusually close to each other.

Della Robbia created a sculpture that is more intimate than any contemporary painting. The glowing oil lamp would have illuminated this sculpture, thus capturing the attention of the devotee. The intensity of this glowing sculpture within the dark church provided the potential for deeper contemplation. Men, women and children, who venerated upon this scene would be kneeling and staring directly into Mary’s unusually young visage. Mary’s face would have seemed to look down at them; she would appear divine and young, while St. Elizabeth’s face, invisible when kneeling below, would be revealed from another angle as being aged. Thus, devotees are looking up at Mary, kneeling as St. Elizabeth was, allowing them to relate to this very human image of Elizabeth. The physical closeness of the two sculpted women creates an intimate bond between the two women, creating a more tender scene.

This reconstruction shows The Visitation on the high altar of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, with two women and one man kneeling in front. There is an oil lamp illuminating the sculpture, casting a deep shadow on the church wall. The three figures kneel on the stairs, one of them looking up at Mary. The white color creates a balance between the humility and divinity of the idealized figures, encouraging people to contemplate deeply.

Selected Bibliography: Bonaventure. Meditations on the Life of Christ. New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1961., Pope-Hennessy, John. Luca della Robbia. New York: Cornell University Press, 1980.,“Visitation.” QSPACE. Accessed September 20,^, 2018. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24590

Laura Dionne, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario