Exhibition at The Met to Shed New Light on Innovative Works of Florentine Renaissance Sculpture by the Della Robbia Family and Workshop

(New York, August 10, 2026)—This summer, an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will celebrate the remarkable contributions of the ingenious Della Robbia family to Italian Renaissance art. On view August 10, 2026, through January 17, 2028, Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met will present a selection of rarely seen works reanimated through research, conservation, and digital media. The exhibition will illuminate figural reliefs and statuettes as well as architectural designs from the Museum’s magnificent collection of glazed terracotta sculptures by the Della Robbia family, whose groundbreaking workshop flourished in Renaissance Florence from 1440 to 1530.

The exhibition is made possible by Lilly Endowment Inc. and Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill.

Additional support is provided by Barbara and Jon Landau.

“Uniting outstanding examples of The Met’s holdings of Della Robbia works in an exhibition for the first time, Rediscovering Della Robbia will revive celebrated signature pieces of Andrea della Robbia from the Museum collection with new conservation and scholarship, inviting visitors to witness the scale, visual impact, and emotional resonance of these distinctive sculptures that marked the transition from early to high Renaissance style,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO. “We are also thrilled to present Giovanni della Robbia’s Mystic Mandorla as it formally joins The Met’s holdings, and we extend our profound gratitude to Dick Wolf for his generosity in gifting this important work to the Museum as part of the enormously generous promised gift of the Dick Wolf Collection.”

Although The Met holds the largest, most important Della Robbia collection in the United States, this will be the first time in the Museum’s history that a significant selection of works will be exhibited together in a dedicated gallery. Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met will feature three generations of the Della Robbias’ production and includes masterpieces by the inventor of the glazed terracotta technique, Luca; monumental works by his gifted nephew and heir, Andrea; and colorful sculptures by the last head of the shop, Giovanni.

Denise Allen, Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, said: "From its inception, Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met depended upon the creative conversations and ideas freely shared among curators, conservators, and digital specialists, underscoring how collaboration between people with different skills fosters innovation—whether in a Renaissance workshop or a present-day museum."

“Five of Andrea della Robbia’s recently conserved masterpieces in the collection—two of them newly reattributed—will be shown in the exhibition. Together, the sculptures emphasize Andrea’s compelling, often overlooked contributions to the development of Renaissance art that will be revelatory for visitors and scholars alike,” said Federica Carta, Guest Curator.

The exhibition’s centerpiece will be Andrea della Robbia’s Assumption of the Virgin (Marquand Altarpiece), a 10-x-7-foot sculpture composed of 66 individual glazed terracotta sections that was donated in 1882 by Museum founding Trustee Henry G. Marquand. This work, the first monumental Italian Renaissance sculpture to enter the collection, has been off view for almost 70 years. While the altarpiece was previously attributed to the workshop of Andrea della Robbia, new research undertaken for the exhibition indicates that the altarpiece was made by Andrea himself and his shop around 1485, and its well-preserved elements reveal Andrea’s craftsmanship at his prime. Thirty-three of the altarpiece’s newly conserved sections will be mounted in place against a graphic rendering of the whole. This display will be juxtaposed with a large-scale, animated virtual reconstruction that uses 3D-scanning technology to suggest how the entire work was originally assembled.

One of two key lenders to the exhibition is Emmy-winning producer and avid collector Dick Wolf, whose promised gift of the Dick Wolf Collection to The Met includes two outstanding sculptures by Giovanni della Robbia that complement existing works in the Museum’s collection. One of these is the multihued Mystic Mandorla lunette that has been newly gifted to the Museum. It will be shown with The Met’s lunette by Andrea of Saint Michael the Archangel, offering a comparison that will underscore how Giovanni introduced a vibrant range of colors into the earlier, restrained Della Robbia palette featuring white and blue.

Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met is co-curated by Denise Allen, Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and guest curator Federica Carta, Slifka Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellow (2022–23).

The exhibition will be accompanied by an issue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin featuring essays by Carta and Allen as well as Sarah E. Lawrence, Robert Lehman Curator in Charge, Robert Lehman Collection; Gloria de Liberali, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow; Brett Renfer; and Wendy Walker.

The Met’s quarterly Bulletin program is supported, in part, by the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, established by the co-founder of Reader’s Digest.

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August 10, 2026

Image: Andrea della Robbia, Madonna and Child (detail), ca. 1470–75. Glazed terracotta. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Edith and Herbert Lehman Foundation Inc., 1969