3-083-281 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

God the Father with Two Angels, c1489. Bendetto da Maiano, the leading Florentine sculptor in the 1480s and 1490s, created this partially painted terracotta relief as a preparatory model for the upper left central marble section of his famous altarpiece of the Annunciation in Sant’Anna dei Lombardi in Naples. The sculptor carved this in Florence with assistance from the young Michelangelo and sent it to Naples by September 1489. Terracotta models such as this one were often used by Renaissance sculptors to sketch out details of their finished works (note here the sensitive treatment of the faces and hands), but relatively few survive. Among the eight known terracotta models surviving from Benedetto’s career, this relief is one of the few to retain traces of its original paint surface.