The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met, a focused exhibition devoted to the Florentine family’s pioneering glazed terracotta sculptures. The show, which began on August 10, 2026, remains on view through January 17, 2028, and draws primarily from the museum’s own holdings, the largest collection of Della Robbia works in the United States.
The exhibition presents rarely seen pieces reexamined through conservation, new research, and digital reconstruction. It covers three generations of the workshop that operated in Florence from about 1440 to 1530, featuring works by Luca della Robbia, who invented the glazed terracotta technique, his nephew Andrea, and Andrea’s son Giovanni.
Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO, described the project’s significance. “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,” Hollein said. “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.”
The centerpiece is Andrea della Robbia’s Assumption of the Virgin, also known as the Marquand Altarpiece. The nearly 10-by-7-foot work, composed of 66 glazed terracotta sections, entered the collection in 1882 as a gift from founding trustee Henry G. Marquand. It has been off view for almost 70 years. New research now attributes the altarpiece more firmly to Andrea himself and his workshop around 1485. Thirty-three newly conserved sections are displayed against a graphic rendering of the complete composition, paired with a large-scale animated virtual reconstruction created through 3D scanning.
Five of Andrea’s recently conserved masterpieces, two of them newly reattributed, also appear in the exhibition. Guest curator Federica Carta noted their importance. “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,” she said.
Denise Allen, Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts and co-curator of the exhibition, highlighted the collaborative process behind the project. “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.”
A newly gifted work by Giovanni della Robbia, the multihued Mystic Mandorla lunette from the Dick Wolf Collection, is shown alongside The Met’s lunette of Saint Michael the Archangel by Andrea. The pairing illustrates Giovanni’s expansion of the family’s earlier restrained palette of white and blue into a wider range of vibrant colors.
The exhibition is made possible by Lilly Endowment Inc. and Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill, with additional support from Barbara and Jon Landau. An accompanying issue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin features essays by the curators and other scholars.
By bringing these works together for the first time in a dedicated gallery, the exhibition offers visitors a chance to experience both the technical innovation and the emotional power of Della Robbia sculpture at a pivotal moment in the Italian Renaissance.
