Andrea del Verrocchio

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Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, later known as Andrea del Verrocchio, was an Italian sculptor, goldsmith and painter, who worked at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence. One of his pupils was Leonardo da Vinci.

Verrocchio is mentioned in Assassin's Creed II, though he does not appear in person. Uberto Alberti, accompanied by Lorenzo de' Medici, attended the exposition for Verrocchio's latest work in the Santa Croce cloister. However, this exposition was intruded upon by Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who killed Uberto for betraying his family.

Verrocchio was born in Florence in 1435 to Michele di Francesco Cioni, who worked as a tile and brick maker and, later, as a tax collector. Michele never married, and had to provide financial support for some members of his family. Michele's fame rose upon his joining the Medici court, in which he remained until his workshop moved to Venice.

Many believe that Andrea started to work as a goldsmith in the workshop of Giulio Verrocchi, but this is impossible as Giuliano was born in 1447. It is more likely that he was trained by Giuliano's father Francesco di Luca Verrocchio, who was a rich and successful goldsmith and knew Andrea as a youth. The possibility that he apprenticed with Donatello remains unconfirmed. His first efforts in painting date probably from the 1460s, when he worked in Pratoalongside Filippo Lippi. ==[edit] == The only signed painting by Verrocchio is the Madonna with Child and Saints, in the Cathedral of Pistoia.

Around 1465 he worked at the lavabo of the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Florence. Between 1465 and 1467 he executed the funerary monument to Cosimo de' Medici for thecrypt under the altar of the same church, and in 1472 he completed the monument to Piero and Giovanni de' Medici in the Old Sacristy.

In 1466 the Guild of Traders of Florence commissioned from Verrocchio a bronze group entitled Christ and St. Thomas for an external niche of the church of Orsanmichele. The work was placed there in 1483. He devised a composition of two figures, with Christ in the centre of the niche, and the Saint stretched out, in order to avoid a rigid frontal view and to aid the spectator in better identifying the two characters.

In 1468 Verrocchio made a famous candelabra, now in Amsterdam, for a corridor of Florence's Town Hall. In the early 1470s he made a voyage to Rome, while in 1474 he executed the Forteguerri monument for the Cathedral of Pistoia, which he left unfinished.

The Baptism of Christ, now housed in the Uffizi, was painted in 1474-75. In this work Verrocchio was assisted by Leonardo da Vinci, then a youth and a member of his workshop, who finished the background and painted the left angel, excelling in quality the rest of the painting. According to Vasari, Andrea resolved never to touch the brush again because Leonardo, his pupil, had far surpassed him. Later critics, however, consider this story apocryphal.