Francesco di Simone Ferrucci: Itinerari di uno scultore fiorentino fra Toscana, Romagna e Montefeltro (review)

Updating her 2001 dissertation, Linda Pisani's monograph is the first book-length study of the sculpture and graphic work of Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, who was born in Fiesole in 1437 and died in Florence in 1493. Ferrucci was an accomplished sculptor who collaborated in large architectural projects and executed individual commissions for reliefs, church furniture, and tombs for patrons in Tuscany and central Italy. In 1491, two years before his death, he submitted a drawing for the facade of the Cathedral in Florence.

Ferrucci emerged as an independent artist in the 1460s, and his relationships with his better-known contemporaries —Desiderio, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Mino da Fiesole, among others—are not as clear as scholars once thought. Recent research is reshaping our understanding of the history of Florentine sculpture in the second half of the fifteenth century. Pisani's volume contributes to this ongoing effort by providing a careful, up-to-date discussion and reappraisal of the sculptures and drawings associated with Ferrucci and his family.

The book contains two chapters. The first is subdivided into nineteen sections, including the fortuna critica of Ferrucci from Vasari to the present, biographical information on the Ferrucci family, followed by a detailed analysis of documented works and attributions, arranged chronologically. The second chapter contains a register of documents, a catalogue of forty-eight items, and comments on his graphic work, all the sheets of the so-called Sketchbook of Verrocchio (attributed to Ferrucci), and nine other entries. The volume also includes 211 good black-and-white illustrations, which alone would commend the book to scholars and connoisseurs.

Pisani draws mainly on formal analysis and numerous comparisons to establish authorship and chronology, while also discussing documents and literary sources that clarify issues of patronage. Ferrucci's earliest documented decorations in the Badia di Fiesole (1463) show especially the influence of Desiderio da Settignano and form the basis for some attributions. Dated to this early phase is the undocumented tomb of Barbara Manfredi in Forlì (died 1466), whose Madonna and Child is convincingly presented as the model for a series of Madonna and Child reliefs. On the basis of the fragmentary remains of the documented tomb of Lemmo Balducci now in the Church of Sant'Egidio in Florence (1472), Pisani persuasively attributes to Ferrucci the lavabo in the Sala di Ester in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (ca. 1470). Published by Pisani for the first time are photographs from the Bardini collection showing the documented double-sided Minerbetti tomb intact (figs. 88 and 90), made for San Pancrazio in Florence and hitherto known only from extant fragments (ca. 1482–85) now in the Detroit Museum of Art.

Clarifying Verrocchio's influence on Ferrucci is a major goal of Pisani's study. Vasari incorrectly calls Ferrucci a pupil of Verrocchio. Rather, he was probably trained by his own father (Simone di Nanni Ferrucci) and remained within the family workshop in Florence. Pisani brings together convincing visual comparisons and literary sources that confirm Ferrucci's collaboration in Verrocchio's monument to Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri in the cathedral of Pistoia. Instead of situating Ferrucci's style between two major influences (Desiderio and Verrocchio), as most earlier writers have done, Pisani sharpens her presentation of the artist by comparative analysis differentiating his work from other contemporary artists, such as Domenico Rosselli and Gregorio di Lorenzo. Pisani presents Ferruccio as an artist who enlarged his repertory over time: he retained a wide range of earlier Florentine motifs and developed new ones.

Notwithstanding these contributions, the volume has some shortcomings. The register of documents is incomplete (it includes only certain aspects of the artist's biography), and the sections on the graphic works are too limited in scope. The catalogue entries lack consistency: they quote some literary sources, transcribe inscriptions...