The Italian sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) created some of the most powerful monumental bronze sculptures of the Renaissance.

Andrea del Verrocchio was born in Florence, the son of a brick and tile maker. Nothing is known about his early training. In 1465 the magistrates of the merchants' guild of Florence commissioned him to execute a bronze Doubting of Thomas to occupy a marble niche earlier executed by Donatello and Michelozzo for the principal facade of Orsanmichele in Florence. When the group was finally placed in its niche in 1483, the diarist L. Landucci called the head of Christ "the most beautiful head of the Saviour that has yet been made." The Doubting of Thomas is one of the most important sculpture groups of the entire Renaissance. It is a dramatic masterpiece of spatial arrangement between two high-relief, life-size figures (the statues are actually hollow shells of bronze...