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Verrocchio (Andrea di Michele de Coine)
sculptor, painter, and goldsmith; b. 1435; d. 1488.
Andrea was apprenticed to a goldsmith, Verrocchio, by whose name he was known. Of his work as goldsmith nothing remains except a bas-relief in the silver retable at the baptistery in Florence (1478-1480). In 1468 he assisted Luca della Robbia in casting the bronze doors of the sacristy of the cathedral of Florence. About 1471-1472 he made the monument of Piero and Giovanni de' Medici in the church of San Lorenzo at Florence. He visited Rome during the pontificate of Sixtus IV (Pope 1471-1484), and made there the tomb of Francesca Tornabuoni, some bas-reliefs from which are now in the Museo Nazionale (Florence). The charming fountain (boy with dolphin), now in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio (Florence), was intended for the Medici villa at Careggi. Verrocchio's greatest work is the equestrian statue of the general, Bartolomeo Colleone, at Venice (begun 1479). The work was left incomplete at the death of Verrocchio. It passed through the hands of Lorenzo di Credi to Alessandro Leopardi, who cast the statue in 1496 and signed his name on the saddle girth.
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