July 7, 2009

Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) – 1529 Douai, Flanders – 1608 Florence, Italy, Pg. #2

by bradpsculptor Sculpture derived from Greek Hellenistic sculpture • Tags: Flanders - 1608 Florence, Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) - 1529 Douai, Italy, Pg. #2

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

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Figure 14.
Laocoön , first century B.C. Marble, 184 cm.
Museo Vaticano, Rome.

Figure 15.
The Punishment of Dirke , original of 150 B.C. Marble, 370 cm.
Museo Nazionale, Naples.

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of powerful energy, suavity, and grace. Baldinucci recounts an entertaining incident that purportedly took place between Giambologna and Michelangelo; whether true or not, it does set up an Italian artistic genealogy for Giambologna. According to the story, the young sculptor one day took one of his models to Michelangelo, who promptly destroyed it, fashioned another to please himself, and advised Giambologna to learn how to make a proper bozzetto before embarking on the finished product.^[34] More certain, though not provable, are Giambologna’s visits to the workshop of Guglielmo della Porta, where he could have learned bronze casting and seen restorations of ancient works.^[35] The exposure to both ancient and Renaissance works was to inspire Giambologna throughout his career and very early superseded any lingering Flemish idiosyncrasies of style he might have acquired in his homeland.

About 1556, models in hand, Giambologna began the long return trip to Flanders, stopping off in Florence on the way. Initially he found support and work through the wealthy patron Bernardo Vecchietti.^[36] The combination of Vecchietti’s contacts and Giambologna’s talent eventually led to continuous patronage by the ruling Medici: Grand Dukes Cosimo, Francesco, and Ferdinando. Such a receptive and welcoming environment evidently induced Giambologna to remain in Florence for the rest of his long life, during which he became the most famous and influential sculptor in Europe between Michelangelo and Bernini.

When he received the Grimaldi Chapel commission in 1579, Giambologna was fifty years old and enjoyed noble patronage as court sculptor to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici of Florence. Writing a hundred years later, Baldinucci attributed Giambologna’s fame to Medici patronage: “The celebrated Flemish sculptor Giovanni Bologna, thanks to having fallen into the hands of a magnanimous prince, achieved not only perfection in his art and riches but such fame as to render him immortal forever.”^[37]

Giambologna’s reputation extended throughout Europe, principally because of his bronze statuettes, which were much in demand.^[38] This reputation was protected by the high quality of the work that issued from his busy shop, where he supervised many well-trained assistants, who later went off to work for princes in northern Europe. Rarely did Giambologna leave Florence, and when he did, his position as court sculptor obliged him to secure the grand duke’s permission to work for another patron.^[39] Even the Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian II and

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his son Rudolf II were unsuccessful when they tried to lure Giambologna to work for them.^[40] This was the situation when Luca Grimaldi decided that he wanted the great Giambologna to decorate his family funeral chapel. How he lured him is an intriguing question that will be treated in Chapter 2.

Giambologna’s efforts for his noble Genoese patron were very much in tune with the spirit of the Catholic Reformation in the late sixteenth century.^[41] The Grimaldi Chapel is only one example, another being the Salviati Chapel in Florence, of how the prevalent view of Giambologna as a superficial mannerist is completely off the mark. Efforts at reform in the visual arts focused on a straightforward presentation of narrative and the elimination of any elements that might be considered distracting, implausible, or lascivious. Prominent among the reformers were Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti and Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano, both of whose treatises circulated widely.^[42] But Giambologna went further than simply following their dicta in his work for the Grimaldi Chapel. He explored and exploited the narrative possibilities of relief to create a dynamic interaction between viewer and work of art. By adapting the multiple-view technique normally applicable only to freestanding sculpture, he succeeded in his relief sculptures in involving the viewer, through time, as an active participant in the unfolding narrative. After Giambologna, Bernini carried this involvement of the spectator to its apogee, integrating the pictorial and narrative characteristics of relief into freestanding sculpture.

Giambologna placed the six narrative reliefs above the statues of saints in their niches in the Salviati Chapel, where these reliefs have a vertical format, about 1.47 × 1.10 meters, instead of a horizontal one and are much larger than the Grimaldi relief panels, which are .47 × .71 meters. The height of the Salviati reliefs is one and a half times the width, whereas the proportions of the Grimaldi are the reverse, with the width about one and a half times the height, like the dark marble panels set into the wall beneath the saint statues in the Salviati Chapel. Because of their size and format the Salviati reliefs had to be placed above, rather than beneath, the saint statues. If we look at one of the Salviati reliefs, Saint Antoninus Reconciling the Signoria (Fig. 32), we see clearly that

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Figure 32.
Giambologna, Saint Antoninus Reconciling the Signoria , 1581–87. Bronze, 147 × 110 cm.
Salviati Chapel, San Marco, Florence.

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Giambologna designed them with the viewpoint of the spectator in mind; the ground planes are tipped up and the perspective adjusted for easier viewing. The depth of the relief is also adapted to the viewer, with the heads and upper bodies of the figures sculpted in higher relief whereas the lower bodies are much flatter. Giambologna’s manifest concern for the spectator in the Florentine chapel would have been expressed in the Grimaldi Chapel as well.

Fortunately, Giambologna’s own burial chapel in Santissima Annunziata helps verify that the reliefs in the Grimaldi Chapel were placed beneath the statues. A set of the six Passion reliefs virtually identical to those mentioned in the Grimaldi contract decorates this chapel.^[31] Apparently Giambologna was so pleased with the Grimaldi reliefs that he persuaded Grand Duke Ferdinando I to give the six replicas to him for his chapel, where he had them placed below the statues, undoubtedly reflecting the arrangement of the Grimaldi Chapel, for there is no reason to suppose that in the Annunziata chapel Giambologna would have departed from the earlier arrangement. Thus in the Grimaldi Chapel the spectator’s viewpoint for the reliefs—in contrast to that for the reliefs in the Salviati Chapel—was calculated at about a foot above eye level (approximately five feet, five inches). The photograph of Christ Crowned with Thorns in the Annunziata chapel (Fig. 33) confirms this placement, and the calculation itself argues conclusively that the reliefs were beneath the statues. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the Grimaldi reliefs could have been placed over the Virtue statues, but then they would have been indecipherable and their entire narrative import would have been lost, an unacceptable solution. The contract for Giambologna’s burial chapel, dated 1594, specifically gave the artist a free hand in devising his own program and decoration, as long as his choices did not violate the decrees of the Council of Trent.^[32] Locating these Passion reliefs above the statues certainly would have violated the Council’s demand for clear comprehension of the narrative.

The location of the Grimaldi reliefs under the Virtue statues would have followed a long-established tradition in painted and sculpted altarpieces of placing narrative scenes below standing figures. Thus the relationship of the reliefs to the statues above them is the same as that of predella panels to the painted figures of saints above them. Many fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sculpted altarpieces, such as Benedetto da Maiano’s Altar of the Annunciation (Fig. 34) and Andrea Sansovino’s Corbinelli altar (c. 1490, Santo Spirito, Florence), display the same for-

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Figure 33.
Giambologna, Christ Crowned with Thorns , 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm.
Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

The challenge of the Grimaldi commission proved a rich opportunity for Giambologna, who at fifty, well into middle age, was known chiefly for his statuary. As court sculptor to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici of Florence, he not only enjoyed patronage but also supervised a large shop that produced works for all the courts of Europe.^[7] Nevertheless,

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Figure 40.
Giambologna, Allegory of Prince Francesco de’ Medici , c. 1560–61. Alabaster, 31 × 45 cm.
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Figure 41.
Giambologna, Rape of Europa , c. 1574–75, marble.
Oceanus Fountain, Boboli Gardens, Florence.

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Figure 42.
Giambologna, Neptune Fountain, 1563–66. Bronze, 335 cm (Neptune figure).
Piazza del Nettuno, Bologna.

he was relatively inexperienced in relief sculpture, the Allegory of Prince Francesco de’ Medici (Fig. 40) and the stone reliefs on the base of the Oceanus Fountain (Rape of Europa , Fig. 41) representing the extent of his work in that genre. In bronze, his expertise encompassed large works, such as the Neptune Fountain (Fig. 42) as well as many small statuettes in the same vein as the Studiolo Apollo (Fig. 43). The problems of narrative were even less familiar to him, and he had rarely dealt with religious subject matter, the Altar of Liberty (Fig. 24) for the cathedral in Lucca (1577–79) being the notable exception. Giambologna’s only

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Figure 43.
Giambologna, Apollo , 1573–75. Bronze, 88.5 cm.
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

other religious and narrative work comparable in scale and significance to the Grimaldi Chapel was the Salviati Chapel (Figs. 20–22), just under way when the contract for the Grimaldi was signed. Both these relief cycles, with their new emphasis on narrative clarity and dramatic focus, belong to the reform age.

During the period when Giambologna was working on the Grimaldi Chapel commission, we recall that he was also finishing the famous Rape of the Sabines (unveiled in 1583; Fig. 1) and its relief. The differences, both obvious and subtle, between this work, even admitting its interpre-

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tation as a political allegory of Medici rule, and the Grimaldi reliefs dramatize the revolutionary change being ushered in by the latter.^[8] The two commissions share some of the same stylistic characteristics, but their goals are patently different.

In the Rape of the Sabines , solving a difficult problem of design is a principal goal. The statue is the paradigmatic embodiment of virtù, an ethical quality the sixteenth century ascribed to the arts; the demonstration of virtuosity that first engages the viewer is itself an indication of the artist’s possession of virtù .^[9] In the Grimaldi reliefs the story itself first compels attention. Remembering that a sixteenth-century viewer was attuned to the moral value of this demonstration, unlike the twentieth-century viewer, puts this argument in a historical, rather than a polemical, perspective. The Sabine statue, a true multiple-view work, met sixteenth-century theorists’ demands that statues provide satisfying views from all sides. Spectators moving around the work experience continuously evolving views, which give the illusion of an action in progress. Even the relief (Fig. 44), with its extensive setting and pictorial form, although ostensibly a narrative, presumably intended to elaborate on the statue above, relegates the “story” to a subsidiary role, emphasizing, rather, the display of magnificent nude bodies engaged in physical struggle. One sees in this visual embellishment a parallel to the art of rhetoric in the late sixteenth century.^[10] It is apparent that the impact of the relief on an audience conditioned by such theory does not lie in any story it illustrates but derives from the beauty of the design and its components: the complex intertwining of bodies, their torsion and sweeping gestures. Raffaello Borghini’s story, already recounted, confirms what the eye perceives, that the aesthetic problem was the main preoccupation in both the freestanding group and the relief on the base. It is not that the statue and its relief are without subject but that the narrative content is secondary.

Two works by a single artist that are as diverse as the Rape of the Sabines and the Grimaldi reliefs owe their differences to context and function. The Rape of the Sabines is a secular work made, as far as we know, not to fulfill a commission but to appeal to the discriminating judgment of the cognoscenti. It certainly conformed to the taste of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, whose enthusiasm about it prompted him to have it placed prominently, next to Cellini’s Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza Signoria. In contrast to the Sabine statue, the Grimaldi cycle, falling in the religious sphere, had to satisfy other requirements; surely

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Figure 44.
Giambologna, Rape of the Sabines , 1582–83. Bronze relief, 74 × 89 cm.
Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence.

it would have been affected by the Council of Trent’s general statement on art at its twenty-fifth session, in 1563, which set the stage for specific directives on the representation of sacred subjects. Local synods, led by powerful churchmen such as Gabriele Paleotti and Carlo Borromeo, then elaborated on these.^[11]

Within the overall structure of his narrative Giambologna’s technical means are visible principally in the composition of the reliefs: in the spatial layout and the figural and architectural groupings. But he went further than simple narrative clarity. He introduced the multiple-view technique in conjunction with multipoint perspective, thus inviting the spectator’s active participation and psychological involvement in the developing narrative.

Each of the Grimaldi reliefs is similarly organized on a tripartite division of the major elements of the composition, as others have observed.

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In Christ before Pilate (Plate 7), for example, there are three distinct groups of figures—Pilate’s on the right, Christ’s in the center, and the soldiers on the left. The architectural setting reinforces the division of the groups.

Entryy for July 7, 2009

Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) – 1529 Douai, Flanders – 1608 Florence, Italy; Mercury In Flight, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

In the Grimaldi reliefs, Giambologna changes the viewer’s relationship to the work of art from a self-conscious appreciation of the aesthetic content to a direct involvement in the story. The intention is not, as in maniera works, to call attention to the contact figure by isolating it from the rest of the composition but to put the viewer in closer touch with the scene. Consequently, Giambologna places one or more sculpted spectators at the edge of the relief, often overlapping the frame and thus penetrating the viewer’s space. Donatello’s fifteenth-century San Lorenzo pulpits, outstanding examples of interaction between viewer and image that had been reinstalled in the nave of the church in the sixteenth century, were important precedents for Giambologna. Spectators in his works, as in Donatello’s, create a tangible physical connection to the viewer’s environment. With respect not only to the viewer but also to the episode illustrated, the spectators in each Grimaldi panel bridge the gap between fictive and real space and invite the viewer to

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Figure 52.
Jacopo Pontormo, The Entombment , 1525–28. Panel, 312 × 193 cm.
Santa Felicità, Florence.

enter the scene. The figures in the crowd in Ecce Homo (Plate 10) are examples. They stride in at an oblique angle from both sides, that is, from the viewer’s space. The open foreground of the relief makes the viewer part of the crowd. Similarly, in Pilate Washing His Hands (Plate 11), viewers can easily take their place beside the man stroking his beard at the left edge of the panel.

But Giambologna’s principal way of changing the relationship between viewer and work of art was his creation of multiple views in his reliefs, as in his freestanding sculptures. A sculptural composition having multiple views, that is, having more than one or two satisfactory view-

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Figure 53.
Bronzino, Christ in Limbo , 1552.
Museo di Santa Croce, Florence.

ing points, enabled, indeed required, the viewer to assume more than one position. Although the spectator can take in only one view at a time, a succession of views in a work so constructed exists in the mind as an ongoing experience. Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabines (Fig. 1), for example, impels the viewer to circle the work to gain its full impact. The concept of multiple views, current in Florence in the mid-sixteenth century, is most commonly associated with freestanding sculpture. Although it may seem impossible to apply it to relief, which cannot be circled, it works within the limitations determined by the planar character of the relief.

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Figure 54.
Giambologna, Morgante , c. 1582. Bronze, 36.5 cm.
Museo Nazionale, Florence.

The ideal realization of the multiple view was a matter of considerable debate among theorists and artists. Although Cellini, for example, in his reply to Benedetto Varchi’s Inchiesta of 1546 on the relative merits of painting vis-à-vis sculpture, wrote that a statue ought to have eight views, his opinions on this subject were not always consistent.^[19] Vasari explains in his Vite that a statue should look equally satisfying from all sides. Echoing Vasari’s opinion, Raffaello Borghini, in Il riposo , 1584, says that freestanding sculptures should be made so that they can be admired from all sides. Giambologna, closely associated with the group that congregated at the Villa Il Riposo to discuss this and many other aesthetic issues, must have been concerned with them himself. A sculpture less well known than the Rape of the Sabines but equally brilliant, the little bronze fountain figure Morgante (Fig. 54) illustrates how perfectly

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Giambologna understood the concept of the continuous multiple view, which could be realized only in sculpture.^[20] In these works the kinematic effect created by constantly evolving views produces the illusion of an action in progress, requiring the physical participation of the viewer.^[21] Each position of the spectator is linked to the one before and to the one that will follow, to create a chain of temporal and spatial experience. As the spectator changes position, the work of art appears to move into a subsequent moment of the action or event. Time thus becomes an issue in the meaning of the work. The unfolding of time through the active participation of, rather than the passive viewing by, the spectator creates a dynamic interaction between viewer and work of art. Throughout his career Giambologna was occupied with the problem of multiple views in freestanding sculpture. The Grimaldi commission gave him an opportunity to develop the technique, this time in relief and with the objective of producing a viewer-oriented narrative of Christ’s Passion.

Perhaps Giambologna had a further motive, conscious or not, for using multiple views in the Grimaldi reliefs: his desire to add another chapter to the paragone debate. Relief is a pictorial competitor of painting, but it is also a bridge between sculpture and painting and therefore a means of eliminating the separation and accomplishing the unification of the arts, an issue of prime significance in the late sixteenth century.^[22] In his 1546 Inchiesta Varchi had elicited the opinions of famous artists such as Michelangelo, Cellini, and Bronzino on the relative merits of painting and sculpture. Cellini’s claims concerning multiple views put sculpture ahead. In about 1553, however, Bronzino, in his double-sided painting of Morgante (according to an article by Holderbaum), successfully refuted Cellini’s claims for sculpture.^[23] In the 1580s Giambologna took up Bronzino’s challenge in the bronze Morgante , ostensibly reestablishing the supremacy of sculpture. Extending this innovation into the medium of relief was Giambologna’s extraordinary accomplishment.

The implications of combining the multiple-view technique and multipoint perspective in narrative relief are worth considering. Such works of art have no single ideal viewing point, or even fixed alternative viewing points, but can be seen from different angles, from which their subjects read differently. Furthermore, different views evoke different responses. Any of the Grimaldi reliefs may be seen satisfactorily from many positions, but at each they take on a different shade of meaning. Multipoint perspective is a necessary corollary of multiple views. Ac-

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Figure 55.
Giambologna, Pilate Washing His Hands , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm, with overlay.

cording to this system, a fixed or single vanishing point is replaced by a vanishing area in which orthogonals converge (Fig. 55). As a consequence, the action portrayed appears to unfold, and the viewer is freed from the fixed viewing point.

If we take as a demonstration three views from different vantage points of Pilate Washing His Hands (Figs. 56a–c), we can see how this phenomenon works. These three, among the many views possible, show an unfolding narrative. The multiple-view technique that creates this narrative also permits relief to function like freestanding sculpture.^[24] A viewer standing at the left side of the relief close to the relief figure near that edge (Fig. 56a) sees the scene from that figure’s vantage point. Christ’s frail body on the far side of the relief nearly disappears under the rough handling of the two soldiers who push and drag him away. Twisting sharply and tensing their muscular bodies, the soldiers stride off with their prisoner in a compact group, which is set on a striking orthogonal. The viewer looking at the back of Christ’s head as he is being pulled away clearly sees three soldiers lined up at the right edge

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of the relief. The most prominent of the three overlaps the frame; the turning of his body propels the viewer’s eye toward the center of the relief. Here, the corridor of space between the buildings seems traversable even as it distinctly separates the activities of the two main actors in the story. From this vantage point the face of a significant actor in the drama, the young black boy who pours the water for Pilate’s hand washing, is riveting.

From a position directly in front of the relief (Fig. 56b), the overtones of the event change subtly. The irregular triangular space in the center foreground emphatically separates Pilate’s group from Christ’s, making the action instantly comprehensible. Viewers have a clear, if somewhat detached, view of the scene, comparable to that of an audience watching a play. From this vantage point the acute orthogonal created by the bodies and legs of the soldiers shoving Christ away propels the eye directly from the lower right corner of the relief to Pilate’s group on the other side. His group, in turn, arranged on a less acute orthogonal, directs the eye down the street into deep space. The clear and judicious placement of the figures in their architectural setting thus both separates and relates these two groups.

Still a third viewing point, from the right of center (Fig. 56c), produces another impression of the event, one that involves the viewer more intensely in the drama, partly because the group with Christ is now physically closer. This intense involvement begins with the view of the bulging muscular back of the soldier grasping Christ. His physical effort, evident in all of his flexed muscles, is matched by the intentness of his gaze into Christ’s face. Just as engrossed, the soldier on the other side of Christ stares at the back of Christ’s head, pushing vigorously from behind. The dramatic effect of these two powerfully activated figures is strengthened by their proximity to the fragile figure of Christ, who makes no effort to resist. The simultaneous view of Pilate, who concentrates on his hand washing while the young black servant stares into his face, heightens the import of the hand-washing ritual. The figure at the left edge of the relief who overlaps the frame, into whose face we look, leads back again to Christ’s group.

The result of assuming a succession of vantage points in front of Pilate Washing His Hands would be variations of the three impressions of the scene just described. Although any view of the relief presents an understandable image, a shifting physical relationship yields subtle changes of meaning.^[25] Accordingly, the story is not limited to one interpretation.

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Figure 56a.
Giambologna, Pilate Washing His Hands , from the left.
Università, Genoa.

Shifting views can, for example, focus on Pilate’s effort to absolve himself of the responsibility for Christ’s condemnation or on the plight of Christ in the hands of the soldiers. The multiple views expose the richness and complexity of a story, laden with psychological and moral questions, that might otherwise have been limited in time and space.

The other Grimaldi reliefs similarly exemplify the effect of varying points of view on a viewer’s interpretation of the subject. A frontal view of Ecce Homo (Fig. 57a) suggests to the viewer the noisy clamor of the gesticulating crowds on either side of Christ. From the left (Fig. 57b), however, the fragile bent figure of Christ above the throng gains the viewer’s undivided attention. A similar effect prevails in The Way to Calvary (Figs. 58a–c), despite its flatter surface. The dramatic meeting of Christ and Veronica commands the attention of the viewer who stands just to the right of center of the relief (Fig. 58b). Moving close to Veronica’s own position, farther to the right, the viewer is able to experience her more personal involvement as she looks into the face of Christ

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Figure 56b (top of page).
Giambologna, Pilate Washing His Hands , frontal view.
Università, Genoa.
Figure 56c (above) .
Giambologna, Pilate Washing His Hands , from the right.
Università, Genoa.

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Figure 57a (top of page).
Giambologna, Ecce Homo , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 43 × 71 cm, frontal view.
Università, Genoa.
Figure 57b (above) .
Giambologna, Ecce Homo , from the left.
Università, Genoa.

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(Fig. 58c). The advancing row of horses and soldiers at the left conveys the inevitability of this death march.

Thus Giambologna’s narrative reliefs, by presenting the spectator with many possible views, effectively attack what might be called the tyranny of the single point of view and give the spectator a freedom of choice and an opportunity to become deeply involved in the nuances of the story, an altogether more subjective approach to visual representation than had occurred previously. A consideration now of some earlier masterpieces of pictorial relief can help us judge Giambologna’s place in the history of the genre. He was both eclectic and synthetic in his achievement.

Many works of two great revivers of pictorial relief in the early Renaissance, Ghiberti and Donatello, whose Feast of Herod (Fig. 49) has been discussed, were visible daily to Giambologna in Florence from his arrival in 1556.^[26] Reminiscences of Ghiberti’s flowing rhythms and lyricism are found in some passages of the Grimaldi reliefs, especially in the figure of Christ in The Flagellation (Plate 8), strikingly similar in form and effect to the Christ of Ghiberti’s Flagellation (Fig. 59) on the north doors of the Florentine Baptistery. The grace and beauty of both are reminiscent of the late classical style of Praxiteles, as seen in the Apollo Sauroctonus.^[27] The ancient work’s celebration of soft sensuous male beauty becomes in the Christian context of the Flagellation a reflection of the beauty of the divine.

The opportunity to study Ghiberti’s relief cycle of Christ’s life on the north doors of the Baptistery as well as his magnificent cycle of Old Testament scenes on the Gates of Paradise must have had its effect on Giambologna. Taking his cue from Ghiberti in creating a supportive but unobtrusive setting, Giambologna established a proportional relationship between figures and architecture similar to that in the north doors, as a comparison of Giambologna’s Pilate Washing His Hands (Plate 11, Fig. 56b) with Ghiberti’s (Fig. 60) shows. Giambologna’s relief seems a further development and elaboration of the basic idea formulated by Ghiberti over a hundred years earlier, in which the figures dominate but the architecture provides the essential locus and helps accent the principal figures. Ghiberti’s relief, however, has only the barest hint of spatial illusionism in the background, which crowds in on figures that almost completely fill the foreground. In the Ghiberti panel, unlike the Grimaldi, nearly all the space derives from that created by the figures themselves. Rather than crowding his figures on the foreground plane as Ghiberti did, Giambologna has distributed them in a gradually receding

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Figure 58a.
Giambologna, The Way to Calvary , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 73 cm, from the left.
Università, Genoa.

space, which derives its limitless appearance partly from the architecture of the setting. Furthermore, Ghiberti seems not to have taken the spectator’s position into consideration, as Giambologna so clearly has.

Some of the feeling of spatial illusionism and amplitude in Ghiberti’s Jacob and Esau (Fig. 61) has been adapted by Giambologna, whose rectangular format, however, lends itself to a tighter structure in which the figures are relatively more important; Ghiberti’s nearly square format results in an airy composition that exudes a sense of tranquillity and harmony despite the intensity of the event. Giambologna’s narrative, in contrast, is laden with dramatic tension.

More significant, however, is the difference between Ghiberti’s simultaneous narration, in which several episodes of a story are represented in the same picture frame, as it were, and Giambologna’s multiple views.^[28] In simultaneous narration observers seem to have the freedom to “read” the image as they will, but in fact, if the story is to be understood, there is only one way to read it, in the correct temporal sequence.

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Figure 58b (top of page).
Giambologna, The Way to Calvary , frontal view.
Università, Genoa.
Figure 58c (above) .
Giambologna, The Way to Calvary , from the right.
Università, Genoa.

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Figure 59.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, The Flagellation , c. 1416–19. Gilt bronze, 46 × 40 cm.
North doors, Baptistery, Florence.

In contrast, Giambologna’s multiple views of a single episode give the viewer the opportunity to experience shades of meaning in an unfolding narrative.

But the multiple-view device operates only when accompanied by infinite, or continuous, gradations of relief, as in the Grimaldi cycle. Ghiberti’s Pilate Washing His Hands (Fig. 60) admirably demonstrates the difference between continuous and noncontinuous gradations. Each layer or level of Ghiberti’s figures projects a uniform distance from the plane, to which the figures themselves are parallel or oblique. They are not, in other words, composed, like Giambologna’s, in spirals that give the effect of continuous gradations of relief. His technique not only

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Figure 60.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Pilate Washing His Hands , c. 1416–19. Gilt bronze, 46 × 40 cm.
North doors, Baptistery, Florence.

gives convincing three-dimensionality to the figures but also suggests movement in and out of a space that is not divided into either compartments or successive parallel planes. Many single figures demonstrate continuous gradation from high relief to schiacciato . One such notable figure is Simon of Cyrene, who helps Christ carry his cross (Fig. 62) in The Way to Calvary . The head, modeled in high relief, projects toward the spectator, casting a prominent shadow, while the left arm flattens out behind an arm of the cross, only to reemerge as Simon’s hand grasps the top of the cross near Christ’s head. Similarly, the head of Christ in Ecce Homo (Fig. 63) is actually detached from the ground; his bare arm is modeled in the round, while much of his body seems to recede into

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Figure 61.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Jacob and Esau , c. 1435. Gilt bronze, 70.8 × 70.8 cm.
Gates of Paradise, Baptistery, Florence.

the matrix of the panel. Equally impressive is the handling of the man standing in the center foreground of the crowd (at the left in Fig. 63). His far side and midsection cling to the panel, while his head, shoulder, cape, and right leg (see Plate 10) bend out toward the viewer. Infinite gradations, such as those found in single figures like these, play a prominent role in the overall effect of each relief in the cycle. Again in The Way to Calvary (Figs. 58a–c), although it is the relief with the least pro-

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Figure 62.
Giambologna, Simon of Cyrene, detail from The Way to Calvary , c. 1585–87, bronze.
Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

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Figure 63.
Giambologna, Ecce Homo ,c. 1585–87, detail, bronze.
Università, Genoa.

jection, continuous gradation from high to low is clearly visible. Between the projecting body of the soldier at the far left, who stands in the viewer’s space, and the shoulder of the soldier to the right of the horses, the projection of the figures continuously diminishes so that the figures in the distant landscape appear as little more than “graffiti.”

When devising ways to enliven the Passion scenes, Giambologna undoubtedly recalled Roman art, which makes extensive use of continuous gradations in relief. As a young sculptor he had spent two years, 1554–56, in Rome.^[29] The accounts of his Roman sojourn, however meager, all attest to his admiration for Roman sculpture, recording that he made many models of famous works in wax and clay, which he brought with him to Florence in 1556.^[30] Roman reliefs existed in abundance for him to see. On this first visit, as well as on subsequent trips to Rome, Giambologna would have been fortunate enough to see such monuments as the passageway reliefs on the Arch of Titus, still free of the disastrous effects of air pollution. The Roman genius for creating the excitement and immediacy of an event, particularly in art of the

― 123 ―

Figure 64.
Procession of Spoils of Jerusalem , A.D. 81, marble.
Arch of Titus, Rome.

Flavian period, must have sparked Giambologna’s interest.^[31] The Procession of Spoils of Jerusalem (Fig. 64) from the Arch of Titus exhibits a spatial illusionism, similar to that of the Grimaldi reliefs, created by figures that emerge gradually from the subtlest low relief in the background to higher and finally almost fully rounded forms in the foreground. Such is the sense of immediacy that the action seems to take place before our eyes. Other elements of these reliefs also resemble elements of Giambologna’s—relationships between figures and setting, for example, in which figures dominate while the setting provides support for the evolving drama. Ostensibly realistic details detectable in the Grimaldi panels, such as the accurately rendered dress of the Roman soldiers and the handling of the soldiers’ spears, evoke the flavor of the early first-century Roman world and place Christ’s Passion in its historical setting. Relief in the Grimaldi cycle varies from a maximum projection of 10 centimeters to a minimum of barely 1 centimeter, so that the figures emerge and recede in a spatial arena that mimics the space of the spectator. Concomitantly, figures twist and turn through spatial planes, creat-

― 124 ―

Figure 65a.
Giambologna, The Flagellation , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 73 cm, from the left,
Università, Genoa.

ing the illusion of a spiraling motion that leads the eye continuously around the panel as if an extended contrapposto infused the whole composition.^[32]

How well this device works with that of multiple views may be seen in the familiar example of Pilate Washing His Hands (Plate 11, Figs. 56a–c). The body of the muscular soldier dragging Christ away is a spiral that culminates in his head, leading the eye around behind the figure of Christ to the other soldier pushing Christ from behind. The action of this group is thus completed. Simultaneously, the tilted head and bent arm of this second soldier carry the eye to the other side of the scene where Pilate is washing his hands. In Pilate’s group the sharp torsion of the black boy’s body unites the group behind him and focuses the viewer’s attention on Pilate, whose chest and shoulders turn toward the viewer while the lower part of his body extends toward Christ and the soldiers.

The most active of the reliefs, The Flagellation (Figs. 65a–c), demonstrates how the twisting and turning of figures through spatial planes

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Figure 65b (top of page).
Giambologna, The Flagellation , frontal view.
Università, Genoa.
Figure 65c (above).
Giambologna, The Flagellation , from the right.
Università, Genoa.

Entry for July 7, 2009

Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) – 1529 Douai, Flanders – 1608 Florence, Italy; Mercury In Flight, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

― 181 ―

Figure 82.
Giambologna, Christ before Pilate , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm.
Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Figure 83.
Giambologna, The Flagellation , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm.
Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

― 182 ―

Figure 84.
Giambologna, Christ Crowned with Thorns , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm.
Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Figure 85.
Giambologna, Ecce Homo , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm. Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

― 183 ―

Figure 86.
Giambologna, Pilate Washing His Hands , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm.
Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Figure 87.
Giambologna, The Way to Calvary , c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm.
Soccorso Chapel, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

― 184 ―

Figure 88.
Giambologna, Christ before Pilate , 1580. Wax model, 48 × 74 cm.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Figure 89.
Giambologna, Ecce Homo , 1580. Wax model, 48 × 74 cm.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

― 185 ―

Figure 90.
Giambologna, Pilate Washing His Hands , 1580. Wax model, 48 × 74 cm.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Figure 91.
Giambologna, The Flagellation , 1580. Wax model, 48 × 74 cm.
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia.

― 186 ―

Figure 92.
Giambologna, Ecce Homo .
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.

Figure 93.
Giambologna, Christ before Pilate .
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.

― 187 ―

Notes

Chapter 1— Preview

1. Giambologna’s Flemish name, Jehan Boullongne, or Jean Boulogne, was italianized to Giovanni Bologna, though the artist was more commonly called Giambologna by his Italian contemporaries. The misnomer Giovanni da Bologna, which lives on sporadically to this day, was occasionally used by contemporaries, and was perpetuated by Burckhardt, who, as James Holderbaum points out in The Sculptor Giovanni Bologna (New York, 1983), 5, erred in translating von , denoting Giambologna’s knighthood, into da , meaning “from.”

July 7, 2009

Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) – 1529 Douai, Flanders – 1608 Florence, Italy, – Pg. #1

by bradpsculptor Sculpture derived from Greek Hellenistic sculpture • Tags: Flanders - 1608 Florence, Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) - 1529 Douai, Italy

Entry for July 7 2009

Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) – 1529 Douai, Flanders – 1608 Florence, Italy; Mercury In Flight, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe

Entry for July 7, 2009

Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) – 1529 Douai, Flanders – 1608 Florence, Italy; Mercury In Flight, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe

{Technique needs to be effortless, at least not hindering the creative process. This only happens on a more in depth level with the thorough absorption of technique mastered. There is this reference to “This limited view of Giambologna’s oeuvre implies that the artist could not be deeply concerned simultaneously with subject matter and technique, that these two ingredients in a work of art are separate. Posterity has seized on an incident furthering this belief that was reported by Raffaello Borghini in Il riposo; it concerns the naming of the Rape of the Sabine’s .[3] The statue was apparently not executed on commission. According to Borghini, Giambologna was working on a large marble group of a man lifting a woman with an older man below to prove his mastery of complex compositions on a large scale. One day, not long before the statue was completed in January 1582, Borghini himself stopped by Giambologna’s studio and, discovering that the work had no title, gave it its name.” I think this confuses the idea of technique with process. Giambologna no doubt needed to work out the complex issues at hand for technique, but my guess would be that he considered the effect of the sculpture work – the experiential space – that he was creating in the sculpture as the higher value of art. The narrative, which would include the analytical purpose, was so far from his creative process that he did not even know what the sculpture was to narrate. Fantastic, the unencumbered and direct appearance of the Greek sculptures allows for great depth. This quality creates a childlike wonderment, similar to seeing an image without internal narrative disturbing the visual impact.

The art can be broken up in a quick over simplified explanation. Technique – the merit of being able to draw, sculpt, all the ingredients superbly. Process – taking the ingredients of technique and manipulating them based from nature into a transformative process for the artist and the viewer. Narrative – is the story and how to intertwine all this together into an expression that relates to the work, and extends an opening for the viewer to approach

Bringing in the narrative on top of the art is a common theme in the Renaissance through Mannerist periods, as well as later periods in art. There are comments from the Renaissance period, and later of adopting antique Greek compositions and content into the artwork. Overlaying the narrative of the Christian subject matter, or subjects of State on top of the specific Antique Greek influenced compositions and content are common. This would be after the work had arrived to a complete working model – an appropriate Antique reference brought into the equation once the model was set from the first creative process. Later the Christian, State, etc., narrative would adjust on top the Greek antique influence. This situation of the narrative if left open suggests the narrative context can come from the subconscious, and work remarkably well. This would be a little like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s, “Noossphere”, or something akin to Jung’s “Collective Unconscious”. All this can be completely meaningless junk if there isn’t the arrived at sophistication of a superb level of technique, mastery of manipulating orders of geometric form, etc… to the end of creating an experiential state in the work of art. This is accomplished only when the artists’ has a high skill level. The point is not whether the narrative was in his subconscious or not, since no one will ever know. The point I think is there is an obsession with the narrative, and literary critque in the twentieth century in describing past visual art history. There is quite a bit off ignorance about the influence of Greek sculpture based on its visual and conceptual ingredients that succeed in transcribing an experiential state. The higher achievements in European sculpture derive from Greek sculpture. Yet the best examples of this achievement in European sculpture do not look “Greek” in their costumes, decorative additions, or ethnic traits. The best European sculpture is not superficially imitative, or derivative of the Greek sculpture. The transcription of the narrative as considered the basis for the level of merit of the art as an illustration is a product of a non visual literary basis of art critique. This is part of the heritage that has come out of modern art. The intellectual theory / process, symbol, or icon of an idea transcribed into an artform to represent it. My feeling on this is that of course the narrative is important, but the serious and noteworthy artwork of the past, especially before the 1830s is not produced as an illustration. No amount of technique as an after thought would bring an artwork conceived as an illustration beyond a meager story. Generally the 19th. Century sculptors referred to formulaic guidelines for the narrative in mythology, and church subjects.

Giambologna would have worked out the technique in this “Rape of the Sabine’s” sculpture in the clay modelo. After the creation of the composition figures, then the sculptor creates the full-scale clay version, changing any elements that were different with the larger scale for technique and perceptive changes in the relationship of the parts, as well as the experience of the sculpture work. There might be several staged intervals of increasing the scale size in successive larger clay models cast into plaster, or fired as terra cotta that get ever closer to the final scale. The sculptor would next cast the finished large-scale clay sculpture into plaster in this actual size model. The sculptor or assistants would next copy the plaster carving using various mechanical processes to achieve the sculpture to the marble. Still through the process, Giambologna had plenty of time to think about a narrative, unless the sculpture was the vehicle, not the narrative placed later on the work. To work out the multiple views of the Rape of the Sabine is to prove his ability makes sense, but I think there is more involved than generally considered.

The book via the web included below is a fantastic examination into Giambologna! } – Bloger, PBP

Preferred Citation: Gibbons, Mary Weitzel. Giambologna: Narrator of the Catholic Reformation. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1995 1995. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9n39p3vz/

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft9n39p3vz&chunk.id=0&doc.view=print

Preferred Citation: Gibbons, Mary Weitzel. Giambologna: Narrator of the Catholic Reformation. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1995 1995. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9n39p3vz/

For my
grandchildren
and their
parents
and in memory of
their father

Preface and Acknowledgments

I first became interested in Giambologna’s reliefs in 1974, in a graduate seminar at Rutgers University given by Virginia Bush. Of all the Florentine sixteenth-century reliefs I studied at that time, Giambologna’s seemed to me the most striking, though they were, as I later discovered, surprisingly little known. Eventually my research focused on a cycle of reliefs that was part of the Grimaldi Chapel, a significant monument of Giambologna’s later years. This book continues and develops my study of this monument. In several talks on the Grimaldi reliefs, I have had the opportunity to expand my thoughts, to probe the political and religious context out of which the works came, and to understand more fully Giambologna’s brilliant exposition of narrative in this Passion cycle. This little-plumbed side of Giambologna’s art has been so compelling that I continue to be absorbed in it and hope that this book will bring it more of the attention it deserves.

The staffs of libraries and archives gave me invaluable assistance: the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti; the Kunsthistorisches Institut and the Archivio di Stato in Florence; the Marquand Library, Princeton University; the New York Public Library; the Frick Collection; the Institute of Fine Arts Library, New York University; the Avery Library, Columbia University; the Spear Library, Princeton Theological Seminary; the Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; and the Civica Biblioteca Berio, Archivio di Stato, and Archivio Storico di Comune in Genoa.

― xviii ―

Countless friends and colleagues have generously helped—especially Pamela Askew, William Barcham, Olga Berendsen, Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, Phyllis Caroff, Gino Corti, James Draper, Nicolas DeMarco, Carol and Roberta Flechner, Mary Ann Graeve Frantz, Constance Greiff, Brian Henry, Monica Hirsch, Katherine Krupp, Susan Kuretsky, Mary Lang, Sarah Blake McHam, Leatrice Mendelsohn, Derek Pearsall, Elizabeth and Vittorio Romani, Pamela Sheingorn, Catherine Stecchini, the late James Stubblebine, and Stephen Zwirn.

For help in procuring photographs I would like to thank Mirta Barbeschi, Karen Edis-Barzman, JoAnne Bernstein, Piero Boccardo, Franco Boggero, Ida Maria Botto, Michael Bury, Roberto Ciardi, Janet Cox-Rearick, the late Gian Vittorio Dillon, Maria Galassi, Louise Gibbons, Marcia Hall, Sante Lanzi, Ornella Francisci Osti, Antonio Quattrone, Jack Spalding, Laura Tagliaferro, Richard Tuttle, and David Wilkins.

My readers, Malcolm Campbell, George Gorse, and Sheila ffolliott, have given the kind of encouragement, constructive criticism, and valuable suggestions I had hoped for but never expected. They played an important part in improving the book.

The Fine Arts Editor of the University of California Press, Deborah Kirshman, gave me encouragement and constructive criticism, as I completed the manuscript for this book. Her assistant, Kimberly Darwin, helped me with endless details. Stephanie Fay edited the manuscript with a keen eye, patience, and unflagging care. And Nola Burger created a sensitive and lively design.

Finally, I thank my children, David and Elizabeth, who helped me keep my ultimate goal in sight through their gentle prodding.

Chapter 1—
Preview

― 1 ―

Giambologna (1529–1608) has been considered the quintessential sculptor of the late maniera, his so-called art statuary exemplifying the refined taste of the Medici court from 1570 until his death.^[1] Scholarly attention has focused on famous designs of his, such as the Rape of the Sabines (Fig. 1) and Mercury (Fig. 2), that circulated throughout Europe in small bronze replicas. The virtuosity and popularity of Giambologna’s designs have fostered the assumption that he had little or no concern for subject matter. Giambologna’s obvious involvement with sculptural technique and composition has led to assessments of his work like that of Charles Avery: “His lack of concern with specific subject matter or deep emotional expression . . . left him free to concentrate on the technical aspect, extending his virtuosity to the limits of the materials with which he worked.”^[2]

This limited view of Giambologna’s oeuvre implies that the artist could not be deeply concerned simultaneously with subject matter and technique, that these two ingredients in a work of art are separate. Posterity has seized on an incident furthering this belief that was reported by Raffaello Borghini in Il riposo; it concerns the naming of the Rape of the Sabines .^[3] The statue was apparently not executed on commission. According to Borghini, Giambologna was working on a large marble group of a man lifting a woman with an older man below to prove his mastery of complex compositions on a large scale. One day, not long before the statue was completed in January 1582, Borghini himself stopped by Giambologna’s studio and, discovering that the work had no title, gave it its name.

― 2 ―

Figure 1.
Giambologna, Rape of the Sabines, 1582. Marble, 410 cm. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence.

― 3 ―

Figure 2.
Giambologna, Mercury, 1580. Bronze, 170 cm. Museo Nazionale, Florence.

There is no doubt that the Sabine marble represented an extraordinary technical feat in which Giambologna solved, on a monumental scale, the difficult problem of relating three figures in the midst of violent activity. But even more significant, he created a statue that not only offers multiple viewing possibilities but requires that the spectator circle it to understand it fully. It is the paradigm of the figura serpentinata, a form that began with Leonardo, was explored by Michelangelo, and was brought to full realization by Giambologna.^[4] This form, pointing to the changed relationship between viewers and work of art at the end of the sixteenth century, gave viewers a part to play in the “narrative” of a work of art; no art demanded their participation more insistently than sculpture. Multifaceted sculpture, a topic much discussed during

― 4 ―

the sixteenth century, is related to the new connection between viewer and work of art. In the mid-sixteenth century the issue was a significant part of the paragone debate whether painting or sculpture was superior. Cellini, for example, in his response to Benedetto Varchi’s Inchiesta of 1546 on the relative merits of painting versus sculpture, stated that a freestanding sculpture would ideally have no fewer than eight satisfactory views.^[5] According to the proponents of sculpture, its capacity to present multiple views helped make it indisputably superior to painting. What may have started out as a theoretical debate had far-reaching and significant results by the end of the century. Giambologna, in works such as the Rape of the Sabines, not only took up again the challenge of the paragone controversy and ostensibly reestablished the supremacy of sculpture but, more important, created a new link between viewer and work of art.

Pope-Hennessy, recognizing the narrowness of the long-held opinion that Giambologna ignored subject matter, has countered it with specific reference to the Sabine marble:

The fact is not that the group has no subject, but that it represents the highest common factor in a number of alternative scenes. Its meaning was from the first self-evident; only its context was in doubt. Nowadays, in our modern art-historical writing, we use the terms “subject” and “programme” as though they were interchangeable, but we must distinguish between them here. Giovanni Bologna’s was a reaction against the concept of programme, and the reason for it was that he took the concept of subject so seriously.^[6]

A view like Avery’s, unlike Pope-Hennessy’s, ignores a considerable body of Giambologna’s work—almost all of it, in fact, from the 1580s on. During the last thirty years of his life Giambologna revealed himself to be a gifted narrator, making a significant contribution to the narrative tradition, as is evident especially in his relief cycles for the Grimaldi Chapel, San Francesco di Castelletto, Genoa (begun 1579); the Salviati Chapel, San Marco, Florence (1579–89); and the Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I, Piazza Signoria, Florence (Fig. 3).

My purpose here is to revise our unjustifiably narrow view of Giambologna and to define his contribution to the pictorial narrative tradition by considering one of the three monuments just named, the Grimaldi Chapel, an underrated masterpiece.^[7] Although this study embraces the entire Grimaldi Chapel, viewing it as a whole, the focus, as the subtitle

― 5 ―

Figure 3.
Giambologna, Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I , 1587–93. Bronze,
c. 700 cm. Piazza Signoria, Florence.

of the book indicates, is its narrative relief cycle. Scholarly interest in narrative has burgeoned in recent decades. A number of art historians have appropriated the methods of literary studies, incorporating, for example, aspects of structuralism and semiotics into their work.^[8] The end of the twentieth century has become a self-consciously methodological age as we try to discover new meanings and relationships in familiar visual material. Scholarship on narrative has moved from description, following the story line, to an analysis of narrative structure and its multivalent roles in its time and place. No canonical treatment of narrative form has emerged from narrative analysis, however, in either art-historical or literary studies. Nor have scholars agreed on definitions or

― 6 ―

a fixed vocabulary applicable to the material. I have chosen to treat the Passion cycle in the Grimaldi Chapel as the product of a complex interaction and interweaving of historical forces involving the artist, the patron, the immediate religious setting, the larger religious context of the Catholic Reformation, and the social and political situation in Genoa during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Given what I think is the complexity of the forces at work, I have thought it best to be eclectic in my analysis, following the example set by Giambologna himself in his approach to narrative.

After more than a century of domination by foreign powers, Genoa, the site of the Grimaldi Chapel, had by 1550 regained its international importance, this time as a commercial and banking center of the Spanish Hapsburgs. Andrea Doria had miraculously saved the city from the French and in 1528 restored the old nobility to power through the establishment of the Republic. Thenceforth the government was headed by a biennially elected doge, assisted by five censors, eight governors of the Senate, and eight procurators. In addition, there was a Major Council of four hundred nobles, from which was formed a Minor Council of one hundred. A further characteristic that distinguished Genoa from other Italian city-states was its system of alberghi, or “neighborhoods,” each controlled by a noble family. All aspects of life (family, business, religion, culture, politics) were integrated into the alberghi; thus the public and the private were inseparably linked.

Undoubtedly, posterity’s neglect of Giambologna’s Grimaldi Chapel has resulted from its location in Genoa, out of the mainstream, and its destruction in the nineteenth century. The bronze sculpture for the chapel comprised six freestanding Virtues, a Passion cycle in relief, and six angels (Plates 2–12, Figs. 4–7), now preserved at the University of Genoa.^[9] The Grimaldi Chapel was situated in San Francesco di Castelletto (Fig. 8), a typical Italian Gothic church of basilican plan with a nave and two side aisles, its facing of light and dark marble stripes characteristic of that period in Italy (Figs. 9, 10).^[10] With internal dimensions of about 250 by 85 feet, San Francesco was roughly comparable in size to San Lorenzo in Florence. The Grimaldi Chapel occupied an honored position, in the transept immediately to the right of the main altar (Fig. 11). San Francesco was not an ordinary Franciscan parish church but a Conventual Franciscan church and convent with an illustrious history.^[11] As the mother church of the Franciscan order, San Francesco was the

― 7 ―

Figure 4.
Giambologna, Justice, 1584. Bronze, 175 cm. Università, Genoa.

Having learned his trade as an apprentice with Du Broeucq, Giambologna must have been eager to go and see Rome for himself. According to Borghini and Baldinucci, he spent two years there, probably 1554–56. During that time he undoubtedly devoured all the riches, both ancient and modern, that Rome had to offer. Borghini and Baldinucci report that he made many wax and clay models, a few of which survive. Two ancient works visible in Rome that could not have failed to excite Giambologna were the Laocoön (Fig. 14), discovered in 1506, and The Punishment of Dirke (Fig. 15), unearthed only in 1546. Both exhibit the powerful energy that is a fundamental constituent of so many of Giambologna’s later works. Surely he also studied, among the many works in Rome, monuments that Du Broeucq admired, such outstanding examples of Roman narrative relief as the Column of Trajan and the Arch of Constantine.^[33] The restrained classicism of Andrea Sansovino’s Sforza and Basso monuments in Santa Maria del Popolo would also have appealed to him. And he must have visited the Vatican frescoes of Michelangelo and Raphael more than once, mesmerized by their combination

― 17 ―

Figure 14.
Laocoön , first century B.C. Marble, 184 cm.
Museo Vaticano, Rome.

Figure 15.
The Punishment of Dirke , original of 150 B.C. Marble, 370 cm.
Museo Nazionale, Naples.

Entry for July 7, 2009

Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna) / ( Jean Boulogne ) – 1529 Douai, Flanders – 1608 Florence, Italy; Mercury In Flight, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

― 8 ―

Figure 5.
Giambologna, The Way to Calvary, c. 1585–87. Bronze, 47 × 71 cm. Università, Genoa.

site of many of its general chapter meetings. The convent was founded about 1230, only four years after the death of Saint Francis and two years after his canonization. In 1250, when the building of the big church was begun, Pope Innocent IV granted permission for burials there, stimulating many wealthy Genoese to choose San Francesco as their final resting place.^[12] Among these was Andrea Fieschi, a brother of the pope and a significant donor to the early building program of the church. In 1311 the church acquired a further distinction when a noble foreigner, Margaret of Brabant, queen of Luxembourg, died in Genoa and was buried there. The carving of her tomb brought the distinguished sculptor Giovanni Pisano to Genoa in 1312–13.^[13] The burial of the queen in San Francesco was followed fifty years later by that of the near-mythical Simone Boccanegra (d. 1363), first doge of Genoa.^[14]

The church’s vulnerable position, on a hill above the center of the city beside the fortress of Castelletto, was largely responsible for the vicissitudes of its existence. In time of war there was the danger of bom-

― 9 ―

bardment; from 1505 to 1537, for example, the friars abandoned San Francesco for fear of attack. Imperial troops sacked the church in 1522. In the mid-sixteenth century the friars carried on a sporadic renovation of their church. The embellishment of the interior proceeded slowly until the 1570s and 1580s, when activity reached its peak under the guidance of Brother Giovanni Battista Fornari.^[15] It was during this period of activity, in 1579, that Giambologna received the commission for the Grimaldi Chapel. By then, the street just below San Francesco, known as the Strada Nuova (now Via Garibaldi), had become a fashionable residential street for the Genoese nobility; many of its splendid palaces had already been built.^[16] On high ground overlooking the city, the Strada Nuova provided a more commodious and a healthier place to live than the older medieval quarters down near the port. Even more important, however, was the symbolic value attached to this street. The old nobility had been granted permission to develop it by the comune . It became the symbol of their power but also of Genoa’s triumph over humiliation at the hands of external powers, for its location just below the old fortress of Castelletto, the site of many Genoese defeats, proclaimed the city’s ultimate victory over past misfortunes.

A coincidence of facts points to Galeazzo Alessi as the designer of this magnificent new street. Documents show that the area was developed gradually, beginning in mid-century, on the initiative of the Padri di Comune and that the proceeds from the sale of property went to the Fabrica della Catedrale, where Alessi was heavily involved in renovations in the 1550s and 1560s.^[17] It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that he was involved in some capacity in the plan of the street, if only as a consultant. The grand palaces on the Strada Nuova embodied the aspirations of the Genoese nobility that Andrea Doria had stimulated in the 1520s when he brought Perino del Vaga to Genoa.

Luca Grimaldi (son of Francesco), patron of the Grimaldi Chapel, was a member of the old nobility, his family allied to the Guelph party. Members of the family were stockholders in the powerful Banco di San Giorgio and for generations had served the city government in various capacities, including ambassador, procurator, senator, and doge.^[18] An older relative of Luca Grimaldi, also Luca Grimaldi (son of Gerolamo), was among the first nobles to buy property in the area where the Strada Nuova would be laid out. In 1564 he sold a large portion of his land, 3,400 square meters, to another Grimaldi, Nicolò, Il Monarca, a noble-

― 10 ―

Figure 6.
Giambologna, Angel, 1582–83, bronze. Università, Genoa.

man whose great wealth enabled him to become the principal banker to Philip II.^[19]

Our Luca Grimaldi was one of several members of the family who were connected to the Church of San Francesco di Castelletto. Presumably he assumed responsibility for the Grimaldi Chapel when his father died.^[20] At the time the contract was signed with Giambologna, Luca Grimaldi was living in an old quarter of the city near the Church of San Luca, close to the port and the Banco di San Giorgio. In 1580, the year after signing the contract with Giambologna for the rebuilding and decorating of the family chapel in San Francesco, Grimaldi acquired the palace of his cousin Luca di Gerolamo Grimaldi adjacent to the church and in all likelihood moved in (Fig. 10),^[21] thus physically uniting the secular and religious parts of his life. The plague of 1577, during which Grimaldi was minister of health, might well have motivated him to rebuild the family chapel in 1579.^[22] He was only seizing the opportunity to be known as the patron of the most sumptuous chapel in a church that members of the various branches of the Grimaldi family had been associated with for well over a century. Ansaldo, one of the largest stock-holders in the Banco di San Giorgio, made substantial donations to the Monastery of San Francesco. In turn, the monastery promised that a mass would be celebrated in perpetuity each year on his birthday, No-

― 11 ―

[Full Size]

Figure 7.
Giambologna, Angel, 1582–83, bronze. Università, Genoa.

[Full Size]

Figure 8.
Gerolamo Bordoni (?), View of Genoa , with San Francesco di Castelletto at center
left, below the fortezza , c. 1616. Collection of Marchese Ludovico Pallavicini, Genoa.

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[Full Size]

Figure 9.
Facade, San Francesco di Castelletto, Genoa. Drawing from
Domenico Piaggio, Monumenta Genuensia , early eighteenth century,
Ms Mr. V.3.3, fol. 12, Civica Biblioteca Berio, Genoa.

[Full Size]

Figure 10.
Eastern prospect, Salita di San Francesco di Castelletto, with the palace of Luca Grimaldi to the right.
From P. B. Cattaneo, Ms 1595–1600, Civica Biblioteca Berio, Genoa.

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[Full Size]

Figure 11.
Ground plan, San Francesco di Castelletto, with the Grimaldi
Chapel to the right of the apse, c. 1785, no. 791, Collezione
Topografica, Museo Sant’Agostino, Genoa.

vember 20, in the Chapel of the Holy Cross.^[23] In 1573 Battista di Gerolamo Grimaldi, father-in-law of our Luca Grimaldi, had the oculus of the church repaired, substituting the Grimaldi coat of arms for the broken blue rose.^[24] And in 1579 Luca Cambiaso completed a Last Supper that had been commissioned by Francesco Grimaldi, Luca’s father, for the refectory of the monastery.^[25]

Undoubtedly, the embellishment of San Francesco was stimulated in the 1570s and 1580s by the building activity nearby, but the spirit of reform initiated at the Council of Trent must have played a part as well. Provincial synods, such as the one held in Genoa in 1567, and apostolic visitations provided a strong stimulus not only for the reform of local

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clerical behavior but also for the renovation of buildings.^[26] Some two centuries later, under the Napoleonic government, the Franciscans were suppressed, the church and convent were expropriated by the government, and the church was gradually denuded of its marbles, bronzes, and paintings. The process of demolition was completed by 1820.^[27]

Despite the tragic demise of San Francesco, the preservation of Giambologna’s bronzes for the Grimaldi Chapel at the University of Genoa indicates that the chapel, much admired during its existence, continued to be held in high regard. In his chronicle of 1674 Raffaello Soprani exhibits his civic pride as he notes that Genoa was the site of one of Giambologna’s major works. The magnificence of the Grimaldi Chapel was so dazzling, the bronzes of such high quality, he exclaimed, that they not only deserve great admiration in themselves but also leave no doubt that even if Giambologna had done no other work in his life, this monument had earned him the title of the best and most excellent maestro.^[28]

The scant information about Giambologna’s early years is summarized by Baldinucci, who gleaned his information from Borghini and Vasari, both of whom knew Giambologna firsthand. Baldinucci says that Giambologna came from Douai, now in France but at that time in Flanders. He went to Italy when he was about twenty-five and remained there until his death.^[29] Although the artistic climate and opportunities in Italy during the last half of the cinquecento seem to have suited him perfectly (he may never have returned to Flanders), to the end of his life he remained strongly attached to his native land, always indicating his place of birth when he signed his works. The inscription on the Altar of Liberty in Lucca reads, “Ioannis Bolonii Flandren opus A.D. MDLXXIX” (work of Giovanni Bologna of Flanders, 1579). And he intended that his own funeral chapel in Santissima Annunziata in Florence provide a mausoleum for expatriate Flemish artists like himself.

Giambologna’s middle-class parents had intended that he become a notary. Talent and inclination prevailed, however, and he entered the workshop of the Flemish sculptor Jacques Du Broeucq (1505–1584), where he served his apprenticeship in the late 1540s and early 1550s. During this time Du Broeucq was at work on the elaborate rood screen for Sainte-Waudru in Mons (Fig. 12).^[30] It was there that Giambologna learned to carve marble in the round and in relief.

Du Broeucq, one of the principal importers of the Italian Renaissance style to Flanders, no doubt was inspired by the visit he had made to

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[Full Size]

Figure 12.
Jacques Du Broeucq, study for the architectural framework of the
Sainte-Waudru rood screen, 1535.
Archives de l’Etat, Mons.

Italy between 1530 and 1535.^[31] He belonged to a growing group of sixteenth-century Flemish artists stimulated by Italian art, more and more of whom made the long journey south, returning with new artistic ideas and finally establishing the Flemish version of the Italian Renaissance style by the mid-sixteenth century. It was undoubtedly Du Broeucq who urged Giambologna to make his own study trip to Rome.

Du Broeucq’s sculpture for Sainte-Waudru in Mons is one of the best examples of Flemish Italianate Renaissance style. His rood screen, partially destroyed in the nineteenth century but now largely reassembled, was an ambitious work comprising ten freestanding figures—seven Virtues, Moses, David, and Christ—and twenty-six scenes in relief, most of which relate events of Christ’s Passion. The freestanding statues are solid, robust, almost peasant types with a tinge of classical calm absorbed from Rome. The stalwart figure of Fortitude, who grasps her broken column and gazes solemnly down toward the viewer, is typical of Du Broeucq’s freestanding works.^[32] The reliefs, pictorial in their definition of settings, three-dimensional in their rendering of figures, also reflect an acquaintance with ancient Roman relief. At the same time, they

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[Full Size]

Figure 13.
Jacques Du Broeucq, Ecce Homo, Sainte-Waudru rood screen, c. 1546, marble.

retain a distinctly northern flavor. The Ecce Homo (Fig. 13), for instance, is packed with swaying, elongated figures who shout and gesticulate in response to Pilate’s question. The emotion of the crowd, not spatial credibility or clarity, is the artist’s interest here.

July 7, 2009

Pierino da Vinci, Alessandro Vittoria, Girolamo Campagna

by bradpsculptor Sculpture derived from Greek Hellenistic sculpture • Tags: Alessandro Vittoria, Girolamo Campagna, Pierino da Vinci

Pierino Da Vinco, Cosimo De'Medici, (pic 3, Oblique View), marble Vatican Museum, (Vatican City) Rome, Italy

Pierino Da Vinco, Cosimo De'Medici, (pic 2, Oblique View), marble Vatican Museum, (Vatican City) Rome, Italy

Pierino Da Vinco, Cosimo De'Medici, (pic 1), marble Vatican Museum, (Vatican City) Rome, Italy

Pierino da Vinci

[Italian Sculptor, ca.1531-1554], – Cosimo De’Medici, marble Vatican Museum, (Vatican City) Rome, Italy

• Relationships:

Nephew of Leonardo da Vinci.

Peirino da Vinci

Unfortuneately I can’t find my favorite sculpture of his in the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, his – Samson and the Philistine – the over lifesize marble that was his last major sculpture before his early death. The entrance to the Palazzo Vechio diagonally accross from the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence.

Pierino Da Vinci – Cosimo De’Medici

Pierino Da Vinci – Cosimo De’Medici as patron of Pisa (1549) – 59K

Pierino Da Vinci – Cosimo De’Medici : Detail – 59K

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

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Figure 67.
Donatello, The Three Marys at the Tomb , 1460–70. Bronze, 123 × 292 cm.
South pulpit, San Lorenzo, Florence.

(1500–1571), Pierino da Vinci (d. 1554), and Vincenzo Danti (1530–1576) highlight the distinction.^[34]

The relief by Cellini (Fig. 68) beneath his Perseus statue in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, illustrates the myth of Perseus freeing Andromeda.^[35] Commissioned by Duke Cosimo in consultation with Cellini, the statue with its relief was intended from the beginning for the Piazza Signoria, a civic monument with dynastic and historical references. The representation of the myth is the paradigm of a maniera relief, in which the artist, through ornamental effects and superb craftsmanship, has turned a romantic tale of rescue into an object of aesthetic significance. Cellini uses the synoptic mode of representation, in which several episodes of the story are combined in the same frame in no apparent order but with an effect that is visually exciting. Relationships between figures, such as Perseus and Andromeda, and spatial intervals are not clear; rational time

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Figure 68.
Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus Freeing Andromeda , c. 1554. Bronze, 82 × 90 cm.
Museo Nazionale, Florence.

sequences have been suspended. Andromeda, awaiting her rescue, turns to view a figure that is not in her field of vision, while Perseus hurtles through a sky devoid of space and air. Andromeda, precariously balanced on a mass of rocks in the center of the scene, has been turned into an object of art whose sleek lines and glistening surfaces arrest and seduce the eye. Her provocative posture and alluring figure obliterate any interest the viewer might have in the incidents of the story; she could just as easily be an inanimate object and create nearly the same effect. Clear storytelling has been sacrificed to linear patterns and finely wrought surfaces designed to tantalize the viewer. The whole intent behind Cellini’s relief contrasts sharply with that of Giambologna’s Grimaldi reliefs, which place the design in the service of the narrative.

Inspired by a trip to Rome in 1549, Pierino da Vinci produced a marble relief in a consciously antique mode.^[36] Entitled Cosimo I as Patron

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Figure 69.
Pierino da Vinci, Cosimo I as Patron of Pisa , c. 1550, marble.
Museo Vaticano, Rome.

Figure 70.
Vincenzo Danti, Moses and the Brazen Serpent , 1559, bronze.
Museo Nazionale, Florence.

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of Pisa (Fig. 69), the relief is an allegorical tribute to Cosimo, clothed in a narrative virtually devoid of setting; the emblematic message is carried by the figures. Pierino displays classically inspired male and female figures as they disport themselves in a procession reminiscent of those on antique sarcophagi. The postures of the figures are designed to show their heroic physiques to best advantage. Particularly conspicuous in this respect are the figures of Pisa supported by Cosimo in the center, the river god at Cosimo’s feet, and the nude youth carrying the vase. Although the relief might be considered an appropriate accolade to Cosimo as ruler of Pisa, whatever historical narrative Pierino represented has been transformed by the visual rhetoric.

The religious context of Vincenzo Danti’s bronze relief Moses and the Brazen Serpent (Fig. 70), unlike Cellini’s and Pierino da Vinci’s reliefs, is similar to that of the Grimaldi.^[37] Commissioned by Cosimo, Moses and the Brazen Serpent , an analogue for the Crucifixion, was probably intended as the central section of an altar antependium, to be flanked by the Flagellation and the Resurrection and placed in the Chapel of Leo X in the Palazzo Vecchio. As distinct from Giambologna, Danti eschews a clear exposition of the story; instead he creates febrile excitement as light flickers erratically over the surface of the relief, picking out patterns that define neither anatomy nor space. The work is full of intense emotion and confusion as twisting bodies tortuously intertwine, project, and then, just as suddenly, recede into the matrix of the panel. In Danti’s relief, drama and emotion result from the artist’s extraordinary manipulation of the medium, in contrast to the Grimaldi reliefs, where the narrative itself elicits the emotion. Danti, an exact contemporary of Giambologna’s, still operates in the maniera style of the mid-sixteenth century.

As we have seen, the maniera method gave Giambologna no solutions to his narrative task. The rich sources of inspiration for compositional structure that he found in Florence and Rome were supplemented by the brilliant religious narrative solutions he found in northern prints.^[38] Since the early sixteenth century, numerous prints by northern artists had circulated freely throughout Europe. Among these were Passion cycles by Martin Schongauer, Dürer, and Lucas van Leyden. In addition to providing examples of monochromatic compositions with plastic and spatial effects much like those of relief sculpture, such print cycles approximate the fictional discourse of literature in their comprehensive relation of the story. Unlike many painted or sculpted cycles, they are

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Figure 71.
Albrecht Dürer, Pilate Washing His Hands , Small Passion, 1509–11,
woodcut, B. 36.

not episodic but temporally continuous, like the Grimaldi cycle. Dürer’s two versions of Pilate Washing His Hands (Figs. 71, 72), one from the Small Passion of 1509–11 and the other from the Engraved Passion, illustrate what ideas Giambologna chose to adapt from him. The latter combines Pilate’s hand-washing ritual with its immediate consequence, the leading away of Christ, both shown in close-up. Two factors link the two groups: their proximity and the placement of Christ’s group on a diagonal that leads the eye to Pilate. Giambologna has gone beyond either of Dürer’s versions in his development of psychological interaction. To achieve this he has taken Dürer’s striding group and moved it to the right and into deeper space, thus creating two foci, which are

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Figure 72.
Albrecht Dürer, Pilate Washing His Hands, Engraved Passion,
engraving, B. 11.

combined with a strategic use of space. A print such as Lucas van Leyden’s Christ before Annas (Fig. 73), from the Round Passion of 1509, could have suggested to Giambologna the deep corridors of space he used so effectively in, for example, Christ before Pilate (Plate 7).

• Relationships:

Nephew of Leonardo da Vinci.

Pierino Da Vinci - Dio fluviale (Parigi, Louvre) .jpg

Young River God, Marble, c.1548
53 ^1/8 x 18 ^7/8 inches (135 x 48 cm),

Dio fluviale (Parigi, Louvre),

Jeune fleuve accompagné de trois enfants
Provenant du palais des ducs de Balzo à Naples
Marbre
H. : 1,36 m. ; L. : 0,48 m.

Offert par Eléonore de Tolède, grande duchesse de Toscane à son frère don García, vice-roi de Naples.

Young River God, Marble, c.1548
53 ^1/8 x 18 ^7/8 inches (135 x 48 cm),
Dio fluviale (Parigi, Louvre),

Pierino Da Vinci - Nilus, Dio del fiume Nilo (Califonia, Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum).jpg

Nilus God of the River Nile, Bronze
5 ^1/2 x 12 ^1/2 inches (14 x 31.8 cm),
Nilus, Dio del fiume Nilo (Califonia, Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum)

Pierino Da Vinci – La morte del Conte Ugolino (Firenze, Museo Nazionale del Bargello)

Pierino Da Vinci – Madonna col Bambino, san Giovannino, sant’Elisabetta (opera trafugata dai nazisti)

Pierino Da Vinci – Cosimo dei Medici

D’après Pierino da VINCI

Samson et les Philistins
Bronze patiné
H. : 38,90 cm.

Legs Thiers, 1880

Département des Objets d’art, Louvre, Paris, France--

–

Dérivé de Pierino da VINCI
Vénus-Pomone
Bronze à patine claire
H. : 17,20 cm.

Legs Thiers, 1880
Département des Objets d’art, Louvre, Paris, France

Pierino da Vinci

[Italian Sculptor, ca.1531-1554] , marble Vatican Museum, (Vatican City) Rome, Italy

Courtyard with Boy with a Fish by Verrocchio.

FLORENCE, TUSCANY, ITALY

PALAZZO VECCHIO

FIRENZE

• Relationships:

FLORENCE, TUSCANY, ITALY

PALAZZO VECCHIO

FIRENZE

——- ……

Nephew of Leonardo da Vinci.-

Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, Pierino da Vinci his – Samson and the Philistine – the over lifesize marble that was his last major sculpture before his early death. The entrance to the Palazzo Vechio diagonally accross from the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence.

FLORENCE, TUSCANY, ITALY

COURTYARD, PALAZZO VECCHIO

FIRENZE

The first courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio was built in the first half of 14th century and then modified by Michelozzo in 15th century, he replaced the pillars with cylindrical and octagonal columns and built the loggiato. In the second half of 16th century all the palace endured important modification jobs executed by Vasari for wanting of Cosimo I de’ Medici. The courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio was decorated, in occasion of the wedding between Francesco de’ Medici and Giovanna of Austria (1565), with plasters and paintings of Austrians cities, in honor of the spouse. In the center of the courtyard is the fontana of Francesco del Tadda (1555-57) with a reproduction of putto and the dolphin of Andrea del Verrocchio (Andrea di Michele di Francesco Cioni) of 1470 (the original is inside Palazzo Vecchio in the quarter of the Elements).

First Courtyard

The first courtyard was designed in 1453 by Michelozzo. In the lunettes, high around the courtyard, are crests of the Church and City Guilds. In the center, the porphyry fountain is by Battista del Tadda. The Winged Boy with a Dolphin on top of the basin is a copy of the original by Verrocchio (1476), now on display on the second floor of the palace. This small statue was originally placed in the garden of the villa of the Medici in Careggi. The water, flowing through the nose of the dolphin, is brought here by pipes from the Boboli gardens.

In the niche, in front of the fountain, stands Samson and Philistine by Pierino da Vinci.

Museums and Public Art Galleries:

Pierino da Vinci in the Louvre Museum Database, Paris (only available in French)

Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Pictures from Image Archives:

Pierino da Vinci in the Art Renewal Center

Pierino from Vinci

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Pier Francisco di Bartolomeo said Pierino from Vinci (Vinci, 1530 approximately – Pisa 1553) was one scultore Italian, grandson of Leonardo from Vinci, son that is of its smaller brother Bartolomeo.

The closely biographical notes on this artist come nearly exclusively from the Screw of George Vasari, which filler one commistione of real facts and legend, difficilemte districabile in lack of other sources.

He formed himself to the bottega of Baccio Bandinelli, gia friend of the uncle Leonardo, but he is above all with the Tribulation that developed its talent: with he he collaborated to the creation of the beautifulst the scultorea decoration of garden estern, like those of the Villa of Castle or the Villa Petraia (1545-1548). After these jobs it entered in the within of the granducali commission thanks to a privileged relationship with men of culture much near the court like Benedict Varchi and Luca Martini.

Its reliefs and sculptures show a sure infuence towards the way of Michelangelo, a lot that some its works were in past attributed to the chisel of Michelangelo. Also the elegance of Cellini Welcome and the purity of Andrea Sansovino influenced it, but very soon it began to develop one endowed personal style of incisività and esprerssiva force.

It worked very also to Pisa: in Public square of the Sedan one is still found its Mercy, while for the provveditore to the galee Luca Martini it carved podereso a group of Sansone and Filisteo (1551-52, today to the Old Palace of Florence), a fluvial God (carved in a 1548 when it had than eighteen years less, today to the Louvre) and bassorilievo with the Dead women of conte the Ugolino, of which us copy in terracotta today has only reached one the Bargello. An other important allegorical work is the group of Pisa supported from Cosimo I, today to i Museums Vaticans.

Malarica fever (1553 died to single ventitré years one). It could not express fully its upgrades them artistic, than already the contemporaries they defined of highest upgrades them.

Pierino from Vinci

Pier Francisco di said Bartolomeo (Vinci, Florence, 1530 ca. – Pisa 1553).
Photographic gallery

Grandson of Leonardo, according to the Vasari died to single ventitre years.

Formed Bandinelli within and of the Tribulation, he is author of reliefs and sculptures of michelagiolesca extraction, characterized from refinement and skill in the treatment of the marble.

To Pisa he executed the statue of the Dovizia in public square of the Sedan and for Luca Martini, provveditore to the galèe in this city, podereso a group of Sansone and the Filisteo, (1551-52, Florence, Old Palace), a aggraziato fluvial God (hour to the Louvre)

and a bassorilievo to throw in bronze with the Dead women of conte the Ugolino, (of conserve the model in terracotta to the Bargello).

Other important work is Pisa supported from Cosimo I, Vatican City, Pin. Vatican).

La Scultura Italiana – Da Vinci Pierino

Galleria Immagini > Da Vinci Pierino

Pierino Da Vinci – Cosimo dei Medici

Pierino Da Vinci – Dio fluviale (Parigi, Louvre)

Pierino Da Vinci – La morte del Conte Ugolino (Firenze, Museo Nazionale del Bargello)

Pierino Da Vinci – Madonna col Bambino, san Giovannino, sant’Elisabetta (opera trafugata dai nazisti)

Pierino Da Vinci – Nilus, Dio del fiume Nilo (Califonia, Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum)

VITTORIA, Alessandro

(b. 1525, Trento, d. 1608, Venezia),

St Sebastian

c. 1600
Marble, height 170 cm
S. Salvatore, Venice, Vittoria carved several versions of the figure of St Sebastian. The life-size statue in the church of San Salvatore belongs to the late masterpieces of the artist.He worked extensively in the Doges’ Palace both before and after the fire of 1577, executing, for example, the stuccoed ceiling of the Scala d’Oro (1555-59) and three statues in the Sala delle Quattro Porte (1587). Other examples of his work are

in many Venetian churches. He also produced small elongated bronze figures of great elegance and realistic portrait busts of Venetian personalities.

Alessandro Vittoria (1525 Trento – 1608 Venezia) was an Italian Mannerist sculptor of the Venetian school, who was trained in the atelier of the architect-sculptor Jacopo Sansovino and a contemporary of Titian who was influenced by the painter in his compositions. He was a virtuoso in terracotta, marble and bronze. Like all Italian sculptors of his generation, Vittoria was influenced also by Michelangelo and by the Florentine Mannerist, Bartolomeo Ammanati.

The son of a tailor in the Italian city of Trento, Vittoria was first trained in his native city, Trento, then moved to Venice, where his long artistic relationship with Sansovino was a stormy one. In Venezia he worked on commissions for both aristocratic patrons and the churches of Venice in the studio of Jacopo Sansovino. By 1550, he was an independent master. After one quarrel with Sansovino, he removed from Venice and worked in Vicenza, and Trento, before returning. Upon his return to Venice, Vittoria reconciled with Sansovino, and the two renewed their work together on large sculptural projects in marble and bronze. The two masters worked jointly on great sculptural commissions until Sansovino’s death in the 27^th. November, 1570. Vittoria took up his studio and completed Sansovino’s unfinished commissions. One of his pupils was Camillo Mariani. He also increasingly won commissions from aristocratic patrons who sought him out as a sculptor, medalist, and decorator and who particularly valued his portrait busts and medallions. Vittoria was also an architect and painter, but little is known of his work in these media. He died at Venice in 1608. Vittoria is known for portrait busts and for medals as well as for his full-length figures, some of which surmount Sansovino’s Biblioteca Marciana.

St Jerome
1565
Marble
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

San Girolamo,

Vittoria Alessandro, – Saint Jerome, Venezia , Santa Maria dei Frari

Vittoria is a complex artist not always easy to understand on the critical level, occasionally slipshod and often highly spirited. His ideal embodies the less classical aspects of Michelangelo’s art, opening the way to a sculpture strongly individual and passionate in style; restraint and harmony yield to the insistence of emotion. { In other words when his sculpture works well it is influenced by the Hellenistic Greek sculpture that is more extended in composition, and the more charged emotional Hellenistic type sculpture is influencing Vittoria. } PBP Bloger

St John the Baptist
1583-84
Bronze, height: 71 cm
S. Francesco della Vigna, Venice

VITTORIA, Alessandro

(b. 1525, Trento, d. 1608, Venezia),-

Neptune with a Sea Horse
1580-85
Bronze, height: 50 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

VITTORIA, Alessandro

(b. 1525, Trento, d. 1608, Venezia),

Ottaviano Grimaldi

1571-76
Marble, height: 80,5 cm with socle
Staatliche Museen, Berlin,

Alessandro Vittoria moved to Venice in 1543 and entered Sansovino’s workshop. The greatest venetian sculptor of the late century, he is documented in Vicenza in 1551 where he remained intermittently until 1553, developing an interest in portrait busts. He decorated the Sala dei Principi of the Palazzo Thiene with eight stucco busts of Emperors and Romans with an unprecedented sense of movement.

Vittoria was a talented portraitist. He popularized the new type of portrait bust on a socle (as opposed to the type truncated at mid-torso). The signed bust in marble – shown here – portrays Ottaviano Grimaldi (died 1576) in contemporary dress, with a Roman echo in the cloack to ennoble the work. The separate socle may indicate a public position, perhaps balancing the bust of his father in the family chapel in S. Sebastiano. The ancient type is modified by flattening and broadening to give greater substantiality. Vittoria’s realism and descriptive powers were extraordinary. Grimani’s contemplative nobility and sensitive mouth contrast with the intensity of his eyes below heavy brows, his physical presence so real he appears to breathe or speak, as in Bernini’s portraits. The bust seems to embody Leonardo’s dictum that a portrait should reveal the motion of the sitter’s mind.

{ Bernini’s sculpture is concerned with light effects, not primarily with geometric form. Descriptions of content perception difference called-

Doge Niccolo da Ponte
1582-84
Terracotta, 100 cm with socle
Seminario Patriarchale, Venice

Alessandro VITTORIA
Trente, 1525 – Venise, 1608

Portrait d’un patricien vénitien
Terre cuite

Collection de Lord Caple Cure, ambassadeur de Grande-Bretagne à Venise au XVIIIe siècle. Don Godefroy Brauer, sous réserve d’usufruit, 1920
Département des Sculptures, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

Alessandro Vittoria - Ritratto di un patriziano veneto (Parigi, Louvre) .jpg

Alessandro Vittoria – Ritratto di un patriziano veneto (Parigi, Louvre)

Alessandro VITTORIA, Trente, 1525 – Venise, 1608,
Portrait d’un patricien vénitien
Terre cuite,

Collection de Lord Caple Cure, ambassadeur de Grande-Bretagne à Venise au XVIIIe siècle. Don Godefroy Brauer, sous réserve d’usufruit, 1920
Département des Sculptures, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

Alessandro Vittoria - Ritratto di un patriziano veneto (Parigi, Louvre) .jpg

Alessandro Vittoria – Ritratto di un patriziano veneto (Parigi, Louvre)

Alessandro Vittoria - Ritratto di un patriziano veneto (Parigi, Louvre) .jpg

Alessandro Vittoria – Ritratto di un patriziano veneto (Parigi, Louvre)

Alessandro VITTORIA
Trente, 1525 – Venise, 1608,
Giovanni Battista Feretti, juriste (1480 ? – 1556), Marbre, Provenant de son tombeau dans l’église San Stefano, à Venise.,

Legs Alfred Chauchard, 1909
Département des Sculptures, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

Alessandro VITTORIA, Trente, 1525 – Venise, 1608, Giovanni Battista Feretti, juriste (1480 ? – 1556), Marbre, Provenant de son tombeau dans l’église San Stefano, à Venise.,

Legs Alfred Chauchard, 1909
Département des Sculptures, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

Alessandro Vittoria - Giulio Contarini (Ottawa, Ontario, National Gallery of Canada).jpg

Alessandro Vittoria – Giulio Contarini (Ottawa, Ontario, National Gallery of Canada)

Alessandro Vittoria (1524/25–1608), ca. 1570
Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari) (Italian, Venetian, 1528–1588), Oil on canvas; 43 1/2 x 32 1/4 in. (110.5 x 81.9 cm), Metroploitan Museum, N.Y.C., New YorkDMesMetropolitan Museum, N.Y.C., New YorkcriptionM

In this portrait the features of the greatest Venetian sculptor of the later sixteenth century, Alessandro Vittoria, are recorded by the greatest painter of his generation, Veronese. The head corresponds closely with that of the bust executed by Vittoria after 1595 for his sepulchral monument in San Zaccaria in Venice. Vittoria is shown with the model for one of his most famous statues, the “Saint Sebastian,” carved in 1561–62 for the church of San Francesco della Vigna. This figure is based on the so-called “Dying Slave” of Michelangelo, now in the Louvre, and was reproduced by Vittoria in 1566 and again in 1575 as a bronze statuette. One of these is in this Museum. The fragmentary torso on the table on the left is antique. The imagery thus refers to the two prime sources of Vittoria’s sculptural style. The portrait seems to have been executed about 1570.

Alessandro Vittoria, Büste eines Imperators

	Alessandro Vittoria
Title		Büste eines Imperators
Medium		limestone
Size		38.6 x 0 in. / 98 x 0 cm.

Workshop Of Alessandro Vittoria, Jupiter

Workshop Of Alessandro Vittoria
Title		Jupiter
Medium		bronze with reddish-brown patina
Size		13.2 x 0 in. / 33.6 x 0 cm.

Alessandro Vittoria - Autoritratto (Trentino).jpg

Alessandro Vittoria – Autoritratto (Trentino)

Girolamo Campagna

b. 1549 Verona, Italy, d. 1625 Venice
sculptor
Italian

The nude chubby boy standing on a convex base, the crowning figure of an altar complex in the church of San Giacomo di Rialto in Venice, was probably intended to represent the Christ child. In his left hand the child once held an attribute that might have revealed his identity. Considering his open gesture, which closely resembles the pose of Christ blessing, the missing object may have been a cross, a globe, or a crown.

Girolamo Campagna
Italian, Venice, about 1605 – 1607
Bronze
H: 32 3/4 in.

Girolamo Campagna dominated sculptural production in Venice in the last decades of the sixteenth century. He won the most important commissions of his day and supervised a large workshop of masters, apprentices, and pupils. Born to a furrier in Verona in 1549, he moved to Venice in 1572 to study with the sculptor Danese Cattaneo. After the death of his teacher, he took on Cattaneo’s unfinished commissions, including several large public projects. In 1590, while working on commissions for the high altars of two major Venetian churches, Campagna began producing bronze sculpture for the first time. Campagna became so famous that an agent of the Duke of Urbino reported that he could pick and choose his projects and “had to be handled with kid gloves.” According to legend, when his commemorative marble statue of Duke Federigo da Montefeltro was criticized, he was outraged and wrote a public letter listing his major achievements. Campagna is particularly known for the dramatic, expressive style of his later work.

Image of: God the father on the Globe supported by the Four Evangelists

God the father on the Globe supported by the Four Evangelists
Italian (Venice), After 1593
Girolamo Campagna, 1552–1623

Model for centerpiece of High Altar in Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice; 4 kneeling Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John with symbols) support copper globe on shoulders atop which God stands, right hand extended in blessing. All on “belle joyeuse” marble base.

This group was probably cast after the terracotta modello for the figures on the centerpiece of the high altar in San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, which was executed between 1591 and 1593 and signed by Campagna. The celestial globe carried by the Evangelists is a Christian reinterpretation of the pagan image of Atlas or Hercules carrying the globe. The design for the composition was executed by Campagna’s friend, the painter Antonio Vassilacchi (1556-1629)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Minerva & Cupid

Minerva, goddess of wisdom, reclines comfortably on her throne. Her right shoulder is turned slightly back; she would originally have been holding a lance. The book on her arm symbolises wisdom and knowledge. The lost lance, the armour and the helmet with its cock, refer to her other function: goddess of war. Her Roman-like armour is decorated with floral motifs and depicted on Minerva’s breastplate is the snake-haired head of Medusa, one of the goddess’s characteristic symbols. Minerva looks down to her left, to Cupid, the god of love, standing next to her.

Gerolama Campagna (1549-c. 1625)

The Veronese Campagna was a pupil of the sculptor Danese Cattaneo. After his master’s death, Campagna inherited his drawings and plaster models and finished off one of his works, a marble reliefReliefThe word ‘relief’ is taken from the Latin ‘relevare’, meaning ‘to raise’. In a relief design or sculpture, parts of the object are raised. In a work of art this might be a depiction, but it also includes the background. In a relief the foreground merges into the background. There are several kinds of relief. If less than half the depiction projects from the surface it is a low relief or ‘basso rilievo’; ‘mezzo rilievo’ is when half the volume of the figures projects from the surface; if more than half is shown the term is high relief, or ‘alto rilievo’. Inverted relief, in which the depiction is carved into the surface, is known as ‘cavo rilievo’ or hollow relief. for a church in Padua. As an independent sculptor, Campagna rapidly acquired a reputation. He received important commissions for monumental projects in Venice and the surroundings. One of these was the bronze altar for San Giorgio Maggiore (1593) in Venice. Campagna produced sculptures and reliefs in stone and bronze. His figures have dynamic, expressive postures. In this he was a forerunner of the Baroque style, which developed later in the seventeenth century. Campagna died around 1625 in Venice.

High Altar, by Girolamo Campagna

High Altar

1591-93
Bronze and copper gilt, 350 cm
S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

The High Altar for Palladio’s S. Giorgio Maggiore reveals Campagna’s potential. The complex, based on a drawing by the painter Vassilacchi, expanded the conventions of the altarpiece. In unprecedented fashion, Campagna transformed the pictorial design into three dimensions (but retained its painterly qualities), which allowed a view of Palladio’s magnificent double colonnade behind the altar.

The pyramidal structure consists of a gilded copper globe supported by bronze Evangelists as Atlas figures. Their poses echo Michelangelo’s four late “Slaves” but they are individualized and finished. The Dove of the Holy Spirit descends to a crucifix in front of the globe, on which stands God the Father, completing the Trinity on the central axis. This Counter-Reformation image, whose metal surface reflects the light in the sanctuary, is worthy of the intense visions of Tintoretto and the physicality of Verone. Its illusionism anticipates Bernini, especially his Cathedra Petri.

-Girolamo Campagna (1549-1625)
Man of Sorrows
Marble, 1577-1578
33 ^3/8 x 45 ^1/4 inches (85 x 115 cm)
Private collection

Girolamo Campagna (1549-1625)

High Altar

1591-93
Bronze and copper gilt, 350 cm
S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

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St Agnes (Meekness)
Bronze, 1592
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

{ Bernini’s sculpture is concerned with light effects, not primarily with geometric form. Descriptions of content perception difference called-“Open Form” versus “Closed Form” are common in twentieth century art. “Open Form” refers to the shape evolving out of a mass of the object, not the defined silhouette of the form, or the surface having a defined geometry. This is a popular theory of departure of content style types in past artwork. The problem with this idea is that it actually evolved out of the impressionists / modernists, and has nothing to do with traditional art. The difference in past European traditional art before the modernists is a matter of bad design versus good design. Michelangelo is referred as having an admixture of both: Open Form” and “Closed Form”. What Michelangelo really has is development away from overly tight Medieval Realism that displays static flattened naive form, and globular formless shape intending movement and the gradation of light, that does not describe complex geometry. The development away from non-geometric form in Michelangelo’s work progresses in his maturity. This “Open Form”, “Closed Form” content idea is not a genetic predisposition of the minds eye, just bad design and lack of an understanding of Greek Hellenistic & Classical sculpture. This is in Bernini’s case a factor of “No Form”, or no complex geometric form, and very little supporting basic form. The form in Bernini’s sculpture is really just generic anatomy, and light effects adjusted to arrive at “Optical Realism” utilizing globular shape. His work has some range with the degree of content, so there are some sculptures of his with slightly more form content, and slightly less form content. This light effect oriented form is why Bernini’s sculpture is so magnificent in a two dimensional book picture. In addition, this is why his sculpture looks so good from a distance to the untrained eye when placed in carefully adjusted lighted positions. Greek sculpture has nothing to do with light effects, and all to do with complex geometric form. There is a large range of possibilities of how this “Geometric Content” can be abstracted, emphasized, and presented in a sculpture work. The range of interpretation of “Geometric Form” from nature demonstrates the extensive variety of Greek sculpture. This “Geometric Form” oriented sculpture at it’s apex in Greek sculpture does not translate well into the photographic medium. A camera translates tonal progressions – light effects, much in the same way as Bernini’s sculpture. So most of what makes a Greek sculpture great would not translate into the photographic type medium. This is somewhat of a quagmire for the whole premise of this Blog, using the internet to set examples in photographs of an art form that does not translate well into tonal reproduction. What is generally alluded to with “Open Form” / “Closed Form” can have validity when a work of art does properly address the presentation of geometric form. The term “Open Form” to stay within concepts of Greek sculpture form content from nature would need to reflect the complex Geometry internal to the shape from nature. In this case the equivalent term related to Greek sculpture form content influenced work would be undulating, extrapolated, pushed form – to represent the concept of “Open Form” and stay within Greek standards. Terminology for “Closed Form” would be something akin to the geometry of the form staying more self contained, not exceeding a subtle range to a moderate range the fluctuations of the rhythms, and geometry outward in the form content. The terminology though has the history that contradicts an association with Greek influenced artwork. Therefore, this compliment associating Bernini with Vittoria’s sculpture work is an indicator of the ignorance of the art historian that wrote the passage above. Algardi was more knowledgeable about Greek sculpture content than his contemporary Bernini was. Vittoria’s sculpture is inconsistent in geometric form, but his best work displays a mature aspect of this geometry. This is an ongoing conflict of what is art at a high achievement level.} . Blogger, PBP

Neptune with Sea-Horse

1580-85
Bronze, height: 50 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London,Vittoria occupies a position in Venice parallel to Giambologna’s in Florence, and he developed a powerful style based on the mature works of his master Jacopo Sansovino and on a close study of Michelagelo’s Louvre Slaves. He was, however, a far finer modeller than carver of marble, and the Neptune with a Sea-Horse reveals him as the heir to the subtleties of surface handling of Riccio, while he imbues the figures with truly Michelangelesque movement.

July 7, 2009

Guglielmo della Porta

by bradpsculptor Sculpture derived from Greek Hellenistic sculpture • Tags: Alessandro Vittoria, Girolamo Campagna, Guglielmo della Porta, Pierino da Vinci

Entry for April 21, 2007

Guglielmo della Porta

[Italian Sculptor and Architect, ca.1500-1577]

Tomb of Pope Paul III

1549-75
Bronze and marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

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Entry for April 21, 2007

Guglielmo della Porta

[ Italian Sculptor and Architect, ca.1500-1577 ]

Tomb of Pope Paul III, 1549-75 Bronze and marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

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Related Reference Material:

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

[Dedication]

Preferred Citation: Gibbons, Mary Weitzel. Giambologna: Narrator of the Catholic Reformation. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1995 1995. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9n39p3vz/

The Entombment (Plate 12), the relief Soprani recorded as being in the Grimaldi Chapel in 1684, calls for special attention. It does not appear in the 1579 contract for the chapel, nor have any documents emerged to prove that it is a work by Giambologna. Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe he was responsible for it; certainly it seems well within his stylistic range.^[43] The potentially unsettling observation that The Entombment differs too much from the other six Grimaldi reliefs may be resolved by recognizing, first, that the subject is devotional, not narrative like the six other reliefs, and that it thus requires a different treat-

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ment. Its function as the altar antependium accentuates this distinction. Giambologna’s ability to add a psychological dimension to the work is comparable here to what he achieved in the other six reliefs, and certain stylistic similarities exist. He retains a variation of the tripartite system, only, as in The Way to Calvary (Fig. 5), the figures are placed close to the viewer, grouped around the dead body of Christ in the center foreground. The gaping void of the sarcophagus next to Christ dramatizes the cruel fact of his death. Its purpose here is comparable to that of the deep spatial corridors that communicate psychological meaning in the other Grimaldi panels. It eloquently separates the dead Christ from Mary Magdalen, the Virgin, and John, those who were closest to him in life. The archway of the tomb on the right and the view of Calvary and Jerusalem in the background complement the grouping of the figures. Several of the figural types in The Entombment resemble those in the other Grimaldi reliefs: the man standing with his back to the viewer at the right edge is similar to the figure at the same edge of Christ Crowned with Thorns (Plate 9); and John and the Virgin in The Entombment are the same types as their counterparts in The Way to Calvary .

For The Entombment Giambologna, appropriately, turned for ideas to the work of Fra Guglielmo della Porta, keeper of the papal seal. Born and trained in northern Italy, della Porta came to Rome as a young man in about 1537 and remained until his death in 1577.^[44] He was successful enough to attract the patronage of members of the Farnese family, including Paul III, and to head a large shop located on the Via Giulia. There he engaged in the business of copying antique statues and made both marble and bronze works of his own design. Because his was the major, if not the only, center for bronze sculpture in Rome from 1550 to 1575, one imagines his workshop as a beehive of activity, a meeting place for the many young sculptors who came to learn and work. Giambologna was probably among them from about 1554 to 1556, when he was in the city. What better place to learn what was going on, perhaps to work as an assistant, and to meet with his fellow countrymen, who are recorded as being in the shop.^[45]

Unfortunately, little is known of this chapter of Giambologna’s activity except what Vasari and Borghini recount about the clay models he made and the amusing anecdote Baldinucci retells about a supposed meeting with Michelangelo, already recounted.^[46] Even if Giambologna did not meet della Porta as early as 1554-56, the two artists did ultimately become friends. Letters written in 1574 between della Porta in

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Rome and Giovanni Antonio Dosio in Florence mention Giambologna, who no doubt saw della Porta in 1572 when he was in Rome with Vasari and Ammanati.^[47] At any rate, by the time he designed the Grimaldi reliefs, Giambologna knew della Porta and his work. These historical circumstances, along with stylistic considerations, allow della Porta’s influence to emerge as a major factor in The Entombment relief.

Guglielmo della Porta had been an accomplished relief sculptor since his youth, when, before coming to Rome, he worked in Genoa with Perino del Vaga for Andrea Doria; in the cathedral with his uncle, Gian Giacomo della Porta (c. 1485–1555); and with Niccolò da Corte (c. 1500–1550). During Giambologna’s Roman sojourn in the 1550s della Porta was designing the equestrian monument of Charles V,^[48] never realized, which was to include bronze reliefs illustrating the Passion of Christ. According to a description written about 1559–60,

L’historie, che vi vanno, sono i 14 misterij della passion di Cristo, i modelli de quali sono gia a buon termine, essendo gia quattr’anni che furno cominciati, et queste istorie saranno di metallo di mezzo rilievo, di nove palmi d’altezza et cinque di larghezza.^[49]

(The stories that go there are the fourteen mysteries of the Passion of Christ, the models for which are already as good as finished, four years having passed since they were started. These stories are of metal in half relief, 9 palms high and 5 wide.)

The fourteen reliefs mentioned were The Entrance into Jerusalem, The Last Supper, The Washing of the Feet, The Agony in the Garden, The Capture of Christ, before Pilate, The Flagellation, The Crowning with Thorns, Ecce Homo, Pilate Washing His Hands, The Way to Calvary, The Crucifixion, The Deposition, and The Resurrection . Unfortunately, most of the modelli have disappeared, and the numerous drawings of Passion scenes in della Porta’s two sketchbooks in Düsseldorf do not include all fourteen scenes. The Deposition, however, appears many times as a subject, and several single reliefs based on designs in the sketchbooks have surfaced since della Porta’s death.^[50] Apparently, he also worked on designs of Passion scenes that Pius IV intended for a door of St. Peter’s. Thus the subject of the Passion occupied much of della Porta’s time during the last twenty years of his life. His correspondence indicates that even after the Charles V project aborted, he never gave up trying to sell versions

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[Full Size]

Figure 77.
Guglielmo della Porta, study for a Deposition, c. 1555–59, no. 152,
Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf, Graphische Sammlung.

of his Passion cycle to such patrons as Cardinal Farnese, Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, and Pope Gregory XIII. Della Porta’s preoccupation, even obsession, with the theme of Christ’s Passion was so powerful that he intended to carry all his sketches and modelli of the subject to Porlezza, his home, where he wished to spend his last years. Death intervened, and they remained in Rome. One can only speculate whether his obsession had to do with his own spiritual concerns or with the reform interests of the Catholic church. Mostly likely the two were interconnected.

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[Full Size]

Figure 78.
Guglielmo della Porta, study for a Deposition, c. 1555–59, no. 96,
Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf, Graphische Sammlung.

Undoubtedly, Giambologna knew della Porta’s designs for Passion scenes, and it seems likely that he drew either on his memory of them or even on an example when he composed his own Entombment (Plate 12) for the Grimaldi Chapel. Two drawings from the Düsseldorf sketchbook (nos. 152, 96; Figs. 77, 78), and a marble relief of the della Porta Deposition (Fig. 79) bear similarities to Giambologna’s design. One of these similarities is the handling of the central group where Christ’s body on the winding sheet is displayed by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Both artists placed this central group of three close to the

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[Full Size]

Figure 79.
Guglielmo della Porta, Deposition , marble relief. Museo d’Arte Antica, Milan.

picture plane and turned Christ’s body so as to indicate its sacrificial role. This image on the front of the altar embodied for the worshiper the meaning of the mass being celebrated. Both artists used a sweeping curve, locking together the bodies of Nicodemus, Christ, and Joseph of Arimathea as the motif around which their designs are organized. In della Porta’s drawings the swirling draperies and open curve of Christ’s

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body create a rhythmic excitement not present in Giambologna’s. Although the draperies on Giambologna’s figures hang more believably than those on della Porta’s figures, the underlying similarity of the groupings prevails. The powerful physicality of the figures, especially the central three, is notable in both works. Giambologna, however, emphasized the dead weight of Christ’s body, particularly his head, his left arm, and his right leg. In contrast, della Porta, even in drawing no. 152 (Fig. 77), where Christ’s head falls back, suppressed the naturalistic requirements of the posture in favor of the rhythmic and ornamental. In Giambologna’s panel, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea strain harder to handle the heavy body of the dead Savior than their counterparts in della Porta’s drawing, who are caught up in the swinging rhythm of the design.

Other differing elements, such as the clarification of space and the simplification of the composition in Giambologna’s relief, are easily attributable to generational differences and to the works’ different dates. The mood of quiet mourning in the Giambologna relief contrasts with the frenzied quality of the della Porta, with its dense, crowded design filled with billowing draperies and surface patterning. The della Porta belongs to an earlier moment in the history of style when the ideas of simplification and restraint were unacceptable.

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Entry for April 21, 2007

Guglielmo della Porta

[Italian Sculptor and Architect, ca.1500-1577]

Tomb of Pope Paul III

1549-75
Bronze and marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

Guglielmo della Porta, the son of a sculptor, worked in Milan and Genoa and is first documented in Rome in 1546 in the Vatican. He sculpted a number of busts of the Farnese Pope Paul III and worked his way into the papal hierarchy, securing the commission for the Pope’s tomb.

An antique sarcophagus and other features had been predetermined by the Pope. The bronze effigy of the Pope was cast and chased by 1553 when della Porta turned to the reclining allegorical figures. In 1628 the tomb was transferred and modified by Bernini to become a pendant to his Tomb of Urban VIII. Della Porta’s commanding Pope is depicted alive and seated on a diagonal in an engaging manner, a less formal pose then the benediction adopted by Bernini

North Italian sculptor, part of an Italian family of sculptors, stone masons and architects, active from the 15th century to the 17th. Originally they came from Porlezza on Lake Lugano, but they were active in the masons’ lodges of Milan Cathedral and the Certosa di Pavia from the 1470s. Around 1500, Antonio della Porta set up a workshop in Genoa, where he collaborated with, among others, his nephew Pace Gagini of the Gagini family of sculptors and stone masons, producing sculpture that was exported to France. Guglielmo della Porta moved c. 1537 to Rome, where his descendants continued to work until the early 17th century.

Guglielmo worked first in Genoa and then (from 1537) in Rome, where he succeeded Sebastiano del Piombo at the Papal Mint (1547). He had a prolific and varied career, his work including several papal busts and tombs in various Roman churches, the most important being that of Paul III in St Peter’s (1549-75). He also produced numerous small devotional and pagan statuettes and was known as a restorer and copier of antique works (both activities typical of his age). The major influence on his style was Michelangelo and he had a penchant for reclining figures in the manner of the master’s Day and Night, Dawn and Evening in the Medici Chapel, Florence.

Museums and Public Art Galleries:

Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Boy Pulling out a Splinter

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Sculpture collection online

Guglielmo della Porta at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
2 works by Guglielmo della Porta

Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK
4 works by or related to the artist

Drawings from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan
(Undocumented Feature: This site’s images all end in “.sm.jpg”. Right-click on the image and select “Properties” to find the image URL, then enter the URL without the “.sm” into the address bar – you will often find a much larger scan.)

Pictures from Image Archives:

Guglielmo della Porta in the Web Gallery of Art

Articles:

Grove Dictionary of Art Online (excerpt)

Union List of Artist Names (Getty Museum) NEW!
Reference sheet with basic information about the artist and pointers to other references.

Guglielmo della Porta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Guglielmo della Porta (c. 1500 — 1577) was an Italian architect and sculptor of the late-Renaissance or Mannerist period.

He was born to a prominent North Italian family of masons, sculptors and architects. He trained in his uncle’s workshop in Genoa and moved to Rome about 1537, where he was very much influenced by Michelangelo. Della Porta provided legs for the Farnese Hercules when it was first excavated; when the original legs were found some years later, Michelangelo recommended that Della Porta’s legs be retained, as showing how modern artists were capable of direct comparison with the Ancients. He was appointed to the papal mint in 1547. His prolific output is varied.

Major works:

Cathedral of Genoa, Chapel of Peter and Paul. Main altar, 1534-37. A triumphal arch motif that fills one end of the chapel, with a central niche containing a seated Christ flanked by the two apostles.
Bust of Pope Paul III, ca. 1547; white and yellow marble (Museum of Capodimonte, Naples) One of a number of busts of the Farnese pope.
Tomb of Paul III, bronze and marble, Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome, 1549-75. Della Porta’s signal work, the tomb was shifted and modified by Bernini

Giacomo della Porta

The Italian architect Giacomo della Porta (ca. 1537-1602) was the leading Roman architect in the last quarter of the 16th century.

It was formerly thought that Giacomo della Porta was a Lombard, like many of the artists active in Rome in the 16th century, and that he was related to the sculptor Guglielmo della Porta. His earliest biographer, however, stresses that Giacomo was Roman “by birth and by skill, ” and this is now accepted as correct, especially as his career was crowned by his appointment as “architect to the Roman people.”

Della Porta may have been apprenticed to Giacomo da Vignola, whose Roman career began about 1550, but he first emerges as a follower of Michelangelo. Della Porta designed the central window of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitol (ca. 1568) after Michelangelo’s death, but it is so fantastic that it surpasses even Michelangelo’s daring inventions, and for this reason it was long regarded as the work of another man, since on the whole della Porta’s work is quiet, restrained, and sometimes rather dull. In any case, the mannerist extravagance of the Capitoline window soon faded.

Della Porta built a new facade for Vignola’s Gesù (less elegant than Vignola’s original design) and the dome of St. Peter’s (1588-1590). The dome was undertaken with the best engineer-architect of the age, Domenico Fontana, and they modified Michelangelo’s original design considerably. It is still not known whether they increased the height of the dome by about 27 feet because they thought that had been Michelangelo’s intention or because they were forced to do so by the engineering problems they encountered. Michelangelo certainly planned a dome which was a perfect hemisphere, but he also designed one in the slightly pointed shape of the executed dome. What is certain is that they created one of the most beautiful domes ever built.

During the 1580s, della Porta built a number of churches in Rome, since this was a period of active church building, when the reforms instituted by the Council of Trent were being vigorously prosecuted. He worked on at least six churches. The two most interesting are St. Atanasio and St. Luigi dei Francesi, primarily because they derive from the model, made 60 years earlier, by Michelangelo for St. Lorenzo in Florence; they have rectangular facades instead of having the center higher than the sides. Towers were also planned, but only those of St. Atanasio were built.

Della Porta was also active as a domestic architect. His most interesting civil buildings are the great loggia at the rear of the Farnese Palace (1589) and his last work, the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati (1598-1604). The villa has an enormous broken pediment which gives it a picturesque skyline from a distance, but it is clumsy when seen close to. In 1602 della Porta was coming back from Frascati in a coach with his patron, Cardinal Aldobrandini, when he was taken ill at the gate of Rome and died on the spot.

Della Porta’s work lacks the personal and inventive genius of Michelangelo’s and is less correct and studied than Vignola’s, yet it constitutes an aspect of late-16th-century Roman architecture which remains to this day typical of the city and of the epoch.

Biography

Della Porta was born at Porlezza, Lombardy.

Della Porta was influenced by and collaborated with Michelangelo, and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, his teacher of architecture. After 1563 he carried out Michelangelo’s plans for the rebuilding of the capital’s open spaces: in the Capitol Hill, della Porta intervened on the façade and steps of Palazzo Senatorio, and the Cordonata capitolina. After the death of Vignola in 1573, he continued the construction of Il Gesu, and in 1584 modified its façade after his own designs. From 1573 he was leader for the ongoing reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica, and later, in collaboration with Domenico Fontana, completed the cupola in 1588-1590.

Giacomo della Porta completed much of Rome’s fountains from 16th century. These include the fountains in Piazza del Popolo, the Fontana di Nettuno and Fontana del Moro in Piazza Navona.

He died in Rome in 1602.

Selected works

Oratorio del SS. Crocifisso (1562-1568)
Chiesa del Gesù (1571-1575)
Fountains at the Palazzo Borghese (1573)
Fountains in Piazza Colonna (1574)
Small fountains at Piazza Navona (1574)
One fountain at the Piazza della Rotonda
Palazzo Senatorio at the Capitol Hill (1573-1602)
Palazzo della Sapienza (1578-1602)
Palazzo Capizucchi (1580)
Santa Maria dei Monti (1580)
Sant’Atanasio dei Greci (1581)
Façade of San Luigi dei Francesi (1589)
Fontana delle Tartarughe (1584)
Santa Maria Scala Coeli
Palazzo Marescotti (1585)
Palazzo Serlupi (1585)
SS. Trinità de’ Monti (1586)
Fontana di Piazza alli Monti (1589)
Cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica (1588-90)
Fountains at the Piazza di Santa Maria in Campitelli (1589)
Fountains opposite SS. Venanzio e Ansovino (1589)
Fontana della Terrina (1590)
Palazzo Fani (1598)
San Paolo alle Tre Fontane (1599)
San Nicolò in Carcere (1599)
Palazzo Albertoni Spinola (1600)
Villa Aldobrandini (1600-02) in Frascati
Cappella Aldobrandini (1600-02) in Santa Maria sopra Minerva

La Scultura Italiana – Della Porta Guglielmo

Galleria Immagini > Della Porta Guglielmo

Guglielmo Della Porta – Boy Pulling out a Splinter (San Pietroburgo, Ermitage)

Guglielmo Della Porta – Busto di Papa Paolo III (Napoli)

Guglielmo Della Porta – Hunt of the Calydonian Boar (Washington)

Guglielmo Della Porta – La flagellazione di Cristo (Londra, Victoria and Albert Museum)

Guglielmo Della Porta – Tomba di Paolo III (Roma, San Pietro, 1575)

Guglielmo Della Porta – Vulcan Capturing Mars and Venus (Washington)

July 7, 2009

“Invitation to the Dance” Greek Hellenistic (Greco-Roman Period) 19th. Century reconstruction by Prof. Wilhelm Klein, of Karlova University 19th. century., & Furtwänglers reconstruction of “Athena Lemnia”.

by bradpsculptor Sculpture derived from Greek Hellenistic sculpture • Tags: Alessandro Vittoria, Furtwänglers reconstruction of "Athena Lemnia"., Girolamo Campagna, of Karlova University 19th. century., Peirino da Vinci, {"Invitation to the Dance" Greek Hellenistic (Roman Period) reconstruction by Prof. Wilhelm Klein

Dancing Satyr Torso Fragment 26 x 15 3/8 in. (66.04 x 39.05 cm), Ist. Century AD, From the "Invitation To The Dance" (pic17), Minneapolis Institute of Art Museum

: Dancing Satyr Torso Fragment 26 x 15 3/8 in. (66.04 x 39.05 cm) 1st. Century AD, From the “Invitation To The Dance” (pic17) Minneapolis Institute Museum

Entry for July 7 2009

Invitation to the Dance, plaster collection Munich, Germany

Invitation to the Dance, - Munich Plaster Cast Collection

{“Invitation to the Dance” Greek Hellenistic (Roman Period) reconstruction by Prof. Wilhelm Klein, of Karlova University (Charles University, Prague) archaeology department in the later 19th. century. Prof. Wilhelm Klein was assisted by the sculptor Josef Václav Myslbek (June 1848 – June 1922). The picture quality is not great. Copied from a small paperback book I bought while at the collection in the beginning of the 1990s. Will try for a better image later. This does at least give the idea of the composition difference between what is in the Uffizi, Florence, Italy now as the “Dancing Faun” and this reconstruction with the original arms and head added with the intended female companion.

The arms, and head of the Greek Hellenistic sculpted marble (during Roman occupation, top Greek sculptors hired to sculpt copies or variants for Roman patrons) “Dancing Faun” in the Uffizi, Florence, Italy also were produced by Michelangelos studio. The actual head and arms were discovered through research for a reconstruction by Prof. Wilhelm Klein, of Karlova University (Charles University, Prague) archaeology department in the later 19th. century.

The parts are in various locations around Europe, – Nymph figure, – Musee d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium; Nymphe Figure, – Florence, Uffizi; Nymphe Head, – Venice, Italy; another variant of the Nymphe figure is in the Antikenmuseum, Basel, Switzerland; /// torso and legs of the Dancing Satyr – Uffizi, Florence, Italy; Athens, Kerameikos, Dancing Satyr – torso / legs; Palazzo Corsini, Dancing Satyr, Rome, Italy; Vatican, Fragment of Dancing Satyr statue, Vatican City, Rome, Italy; Plaster of lost Dancing Satyr statue – Göttingen “Gotha Dancing Faun”, ( lost in route to Russia in the 1870′s or so, date of 1870 to recast on request during stop over on trip in Gotha, Thuringia, Germany while en route from Italy to Russia. Lost in Russia at the time period. ) also plaster same in Ravenna Academy of Art, Italy; etc… The composition reconstruction based on finds in Syria, and a coin of Cyzicus A.D. 200, London, British Museum, Untied Kingdom. There is also a reconstruction ( a poor quality casting ) by Professor Rizzo in the Istituto di Archeologia, Universita di Roma, Rome, Italy. These actual Greek parts that were missing previously are of completely different shape orientation, appearence, position, and composition than the parts supplied as fill in by Michelangelo’s studio. The plaster “Invitation to the Dance” (Dancing Faun with the intended female figure of a seated nymph) composite of all the parts of the Hellenistic sculpture can be seen in the Czech Republic, in the cast collection of the University archaeology department. Part of the collection was previously moved north near the Polish border into an empty historic former Franciscan monastery church, and paper mill in a small historic town that was part of Sudantenland. This move out of Prague took place during the political time period of the Prague Spring which ended with Soviet tanks. The collection is still located here as far as I know. The last I saw the condition of this plaster was excellent, of fine hairline detail quality, thinly waxed as well. The sculpture group consists of a standing nude satyr beating time on a kroupezion or foot-clapper before a seated half-clad nymph who is putting on her sandal in order to accept the invitation extended. This sculpture reconstruction displays a breakthrough in understanding of composition in Greek Hellenistic sculpture. The parts are of abstracted geometric form from nature, and reflect specific geometric shape orientation throughout the sculpture with this reconstruction. The version seen in the Uffizi (pictured below) still has the parts added by Michelangelo’s studio, and is meager in comparison, as well as constrained in composition. It was common to produce all the missing pieces of Greek, Hellenistic, and Greco Roman sculpture with additions made by the sculptors of the day. The understanding of Greek sculpture slowly emerged over many hundreds of years from the early Renaissance forward. Unfortunately this coincided with progressively lesser quality output as time progressed from the majority of European sculpture especially as the 19th. Century approached. I don’t think there is any correlation between more understanding of Greek sculpture history, finding many additional new Greek sculptures, and the decline in quality of the European sculpture. The understanding of the history of, and dated periods that particular Greek sculpture was made was not understood until the 19th. Century. The process of understanding is still going on now, as well as finding many very important Hellenistic sculptures. There were quite a few archaeologists specializing in reconstructions of Hellenistic and Classical Greek sculpture starting in the second half of the 19th. century through the mid twentieth century – B. Schweitzer, Leipzig; H. Schober; E. Künzl; Bernard Andreae; B. Conticello; Magi; etc… . There are still some that have continued this study especially since the 1980s } - Bloger, PBP

“Dancing Faun” Hellenistic Greek under Roman rule copy after Hellenistic Greek bronze. Arms, Head, added by Michelangelo’s studio, Ufizzi Museum, Florence Italy.

{Another varient of the Satyr – The reconstruction of Wilhelm Klein has raised arms with extended free fingers in a snapping motion, that would be holding added finger cymbols probably of bronze. The correct additions of the reconstruction by Kleine are more articulated, spindly in geometry of the shape as the rest of the figure, as well as a more articulated defined and expressive face. I assume much of this sculpture are additions added from the period this was found in Rome.} – Bloger, PBP

Musée du Louvre, Paris, FranceDescription

Dimensions

Location

Dancing satyr from the group “Invitation to the dance”. Roman copy (1st-2nd century CE) of a hellenistic original (2nd century BC) known by coins of Cyzicus (Asia Minor) and numerous copies (such as Louvre Ma 528). Found in Rome in 1630, it was heavily restored: a large part of the arms and legs, the cymbals and the tree trunk are modern. It seems that the satyr originally was beating time, snapping fingers in rythm and using a kind of Greek castanets with his foot.

H. 143 cm (4 ft. 8 ¼ in.)

Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities, Denon, ground floor, room 17

Dancing satyr from “invitation to the dance”-Roman piece of Art from the imperial time-Between the first and second century after J.C-Discovered in Roma in 1630-Marble

The Louvre museum-Paris

The Farnese Hercules, engraved by Hendrick Goltzius, 1591. Two onlookers give scale.

Farnese Hercules,ca.1592 (published and dated 1617)
Hendrick Goltzius (Netherlandish,1558–1617)
Engraving; 16 7/16 x 11 15/16 in. (41.8 x 30.4 cm)
It was Goltzius’ poor health as well as his desire to see the treasures of Rome that inspired him to travel to Italy in 1590–91. Supposedly, the famed Dutch printmaker traveled incognito in order to avoid social obligations that might distract from his real purpose, which was sketching and studying antique sculptures. The ancient Roman statue known as the Farnese Hercules had been discovered in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1546, and installed in a courtyard of the Farnese family’s palace on the banks of the Tiber, where it was one of the highlights of the Roman tour for visiting scholars, connoisseurs, and artists. When Goltzius drew the statue, the legs he saw were substitutions that had been made by Guglielmo della Porta in 1560—although the ancient legs had been found soon after the rest of the statue, Michelangelo convinced the Farnese that the modern ones were just as good. The two figures looking up at the massive statue in the lower right corner of the engraving have never been satisfactorily identified. Perhaps, as was suggested by the eighteenth-century Dutch artist and collector Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, they are a self-portrait and a portrait of the artist’s stepson Jacob Matham, who was also an engraver. The Farnese Hercules shows to excellent advantage the virtuosic technique that Goltzius had developed, in which the swelling and tapering line pioneered by Cornelis Cort is exaggerated to the point that it becomes a focus of interest in itself. As the line winds around the forms, expanding and contracting, it gives great sculptural force to the curves and bulges of the hero’s body. The engraving by Goltzius, unusual for its viewpoint and its inclusion of observers, was one of a long series that had spread the fame of the statue, including one by Jacob Bos (41.72[2.63]) that provides the more common front view of the Hercules.

Farnese Hercules - Munich Plaster Cast Museum

“Farnese Hercules” Hellensitic Greek copy after a Hellenistic Greek bronze, copy made in the early third century CE by Glykon of an original of Lysippos or one of his circle, of the fourth century BCE., made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome (dedicated in 216 CE), where it was recovered in 1546., Museo Archeologico Nazionale.

{This is a rather unfortunate influence of the power and prestige going to the head of a very impressive and accomplished sculptor. Michelangelo is fantastic and his sculpture and drawing are superb, but in comparison to the top tier Greek sculpture, he is a minor talent. To take the legs of della Porta’s fabrication and prefer these arbitrary substitutes is amazingly ignorant and stupid. The reason Michelangelo made this statement may have been his intention to counter the evolving category of sculptors within the confines of the Guild System. Later in life, he made a statement something along the line – that he never arrived at the level of sophistication of Greek sculpture, presumed to allude to the “Belvedere Torso”. This is a fair self-appraisal, which seems obvious when one is familiar with Greek sculpture. This statement could apply to the whole of the European output of traditional sculpture. }- statement by bloger, PBP

when the original legs were recovered from ongoing excavations in the Baths of Caracalla, della Porta’s were retained, on Michelangelo‘s advice, in part to demonstrate that modern sculptors could bear direct comparison with the ancients. The original legs, from the Borghese collection, were not reunited with the sculpture until 1787.^[4] Goethe, in his Italian Journey, recounts his differing impressions upon seeing the Hercules with each set of legs, marvelling at the clear superiority of the original ones.

Hercules is caught in a rare moment of repose. Leaning on his knobby club which is draped with the pelt of the Nemean Lion, he holds the apples of the Hesperides in his right hand, but conceals them behind his back like a baseball pitcher with a knuckleball. Copies of the Farnese Hercules appeared in 17th and 18th century gardens throughout Europe. At Wilhelmshöhe, near Kassel, a colossal version 8.5 m high produced by Johann Jacob Anthoni, 1713-1717, has become the city’s mascot. André Le Nôtre placed a full-size gilded version against the skyline at the far end of the main vista at Vaux-le-Vicomte. That at Palace of Versailles is a copy by Jean Cornu, 1684-86. In Scotland, a rare copy in lead, of the first half of the 18th century, overlooks the recently restored Hercules Garden at Blair Castle.

The sculpture bears the incised signature of Glykon, in Greek. Glykon, whether working in Rome or Athens, is not otherwise known. Bieber 1961; Robertson 1975. ; The chronicler Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1556. ; Haskell and Penny 1981 p. 229. ; Haskell and Penny.

Hercules Farnese

Goltzius’ engraving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Coin of Constantine the Great depicting the Farnese Hercules

The Farnese Hercules

A Roman copy, signed by the Athenian Glykon, of a lost bronze statue attributed to Lysippus. It represents the hero of the “twelve labors” in an unusual resting attitude. He has just stolen the golden apples, which he holds in his right hand behind his back, from the garden of the Hesperides. He looks downward, his bearded head reclined on his chest, as he leans his naked, powerfully muscled body on his club covered by the lion skin, on which he lets his left arm fall. This attitude is in sharp contrast with the traditional images of the hero; the Naples Hercules is thoughtful and introspective, and seems almost to have forgotten his exploit, or even to be attempting to hide its tokens. The statue was found in 1546. The missing lower part of its legs was restored by Guglielmo Della Porta, a pupil of Michelangelo. Even after the original legs were found, those by Della Porta were maintained until the end of the 19th century. They are presently on exhibit in this room. Today, scholars concur in attributing the Greek original to Lysippus. Indeed, the style of the work shows typical traits of the time of this celebrated Greek sculptor; furthermore, Hercules seems to have been one of his favorite iconographic subjects. In the Thermae of Caracalla, the Farnese Hercules was a pendant to another colossal statue known as the “Latin Hercules”, presently in the Bourbonic Kings’ residence at Caserta (Reggia di Caserta)

Marble; h. 3.17 m.
Beginning of the 3rd century
B.C. (from a bronze original of
the 4th century B.C.)
From Rome, Thermae of
Caracalla.
Farnese collection.
Inv. MANN 6001.

Guglielmo della Porta

Museums and Public Art Galleries:

Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan ; Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia ; Boy Pulling out a Splinter ; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Sculpture collection online ; Guglielmo della Porta at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. ; 2 works by Guglielmo della Porta ; Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK 4 works by or related to the artist ; Drawings from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (Undocumented Feature: This site’s images all end in “.sm.jpg”. Right-click on the image and select “Properties” to find the image URL, then enter the URL without the “.sm” into the address bar – you will often find a much larger scan.)

Pictures from Image Archives:

Guglielmo della Porta in the Web Gallery of Art

Giacomo della Porta ; The Italian architect Giacomo della Porta (ca. 1537-1602) was the leading Roman architect in the last quarter of the 16th century.

Hlavní loď

There are also some unique reconstructions of statues and sculptures, which were not preserved in their entirety. Their parts have been dispersed to various museums and galleries throughout the world (e.g. the Sculptures Invitation to Dance and Athena and Marsyas). The reconstructions, which were led by Professor W. Klein with the help of J. V. Myslbek and his pupils, are to this day reproduced in special literature from exhibited casts.

Athena and Marsyas reconstruction, Wilhelm Klein

Kopf der der «Athena Lemnia» aus Pozzuoli

Kopf der der «Athena Lemnia» aus Pozzuoli.

Athena Lemnia , in Pozzuoli (close to Naples) In the Temple of Augustus, a second copy of the head

Athena Lemnia, Abguß und Rekonstruktion, Staatliche Museen Kassel

Athena Lemnia
Cast and reconstruction (P. Gercke and H. D. Tylle in 1990/91) röm. Marble copy Dresden Humph 49 (1. Cent. A.D.) after Greek. Bronze statue of the Phidias (around 450 B.C.) gypsum, paints, H. approx. 250 cms
Inv. No. N 139

Marble sculptures in antique Greece (as well as Rome continueing this precedent) were painted originally colorfully. The colored versions are mostly lost, or have examples only in rudimentary states. Therefore, the antique adoption of the Renaissance, the image of a ” white antiquity “ became the expectation and norm. In Kassel one has tried in a plaster cast to reconstruct the painting of a marble sculpture of Athena Lemnia. Athena Lemnia of Apollon, several Roman copies (Greek sculptors of great ability – for the better versions – working for Roman clients, during the Roman rule of Greece) have survived, as well as also after a lost Greek bronze original of sculptor Phidias which was put up on the Athens Acropolis. The archeologist Adolf Furtwängler reconstructed in 1891 this highly classical statue type from two Roman marble copies (Greek sculptors working during Roman rule) and from Gemmenbildern. The cast follows this version and complements them around lance and helmet. Idealized trains and a restrained movement mark this representation of the maiden goddess, a daughter of the Zeus. She was the protective goddess of Athens

Rekonstruktion af Athena Lemnia, 1914/1993.
Original af bronze fra 5. århundrede f. Kr.
(Staatliche Museen Kassel)

Postkort mål: 15 x 10 cm

Gipsafstøbning, bemalet. 208×81,5×50 cm
Inventarnr.: KAS40
Erhvervelse
1896

Originalerne
Original nr. 1
Dresden. Inventarnr.: Kat. HM 49 / Inv. G 1060
Fundsted/proveniens: Italien, Torso ex Albani 1728
Romersk kopi efter Græsk, klassisk Ca. 440 f.Kr.
Marmor

Original nr. 2
Museo Civico Archaeologico. Inventarnr.: Kat. HM 49 / Inv. G 1060
Fundsted/proveniens: Italien, Torso ex Albani 1728
Romersk kopi efter Græsk, klassisk Ca. 440 f.Kr.
Marmor

Rekonstruktion af Athena Lemnia ved Furtwängler med torso i Dresden og Palagi-hovedet i Bologna

Reconstruction of Athena Lemnia at Dresden
Reconstruction of Athena Lemnia with body of Dresden and Palagi head type. The arms position follow closely the painting of Boston 95.43.
Staatliche Museum, Dresden

Rekonstruktion af Athena Lemnia ved Furtwängler med torso i Dresden og Palagi-hovedet i Bologna

Originalerne
Original nr. 1
Dresden. Inventarnr.: Kat. HM 49 / Inv. G 1060
Fundsted/proveniens: Italien, Torso ex Albani 1728
Romersk kopi efter Græsk, klassisk Ca. 440 f.Kr.
Marmor

Original nr. 2
Museo Civico Archaeologico. Inventarnr.: Kat. HM 49 / Inv. G 1060
Fundsted/proveniens: Italien, Torso ex Albani 1728
Romersk kopi efter Græsk, klassisk Ca. 440 f.Kr.
Marmor

Adolf Furtwängler

- 30th June In 1853 in Freiburg in the mash region, † at night from 10. October to 11th October In 1907 in Athens) was Classical archeology .

Life

After study in Freiburg, Leipzig and Munich as well as the doctorate in 1874 with Heinrich Brunn if he received in 1876 to 1878 a rice scholarship German archaeological institute and took in excavations in Mykene, Olympia (Greece) and Aigina (island) (Ägina) share. After the habilitation postdoctoral qualification in 1879 in Bonn he was active in 1882 in the Antiquarium in Berlin. In 1894 Adolf Furtwängler Professor became for classical archeology in Munich and at the same time manager of the cast collection, 1896 leaders of the Antiquariums in Munich. He counts as one of the most significant German archeologists. He published works about Greek plastic and vase painting. He initiated a modern copy criticism and most investigation. His masterpieces of the Greek plastic is a whole representation to the Greek art of the antiquity which can count still today absolutely as a standard work. It was also translated into several languages. The copy criticism was promoted decisively among other things by Franz Studniczka . His reconstruction attempt of her is also to be mentioned Venus of Milo . Furtwänglers older son was the famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler; his grandson Andreas E. Furtwängler if is likewise archeologist and numismatist. Furtwängler was the father-in-law of the philosopher Max Scheler .

Furtwänglers Rekonstruktion der «Athena Lemnia»

Fig 2

Furtwänglers reconstruction of “Athena Lemnia”.

Since the outgoing 19-th century the so reconstructed statue is called “Lemnia”, in spite of the doubts expressed over and over again. However, Furtwänglers suggestion still remains plausible whole-secretly: First the stylistic signs of the figure fit timewise excellently to at the middle of the century occupied Weihung of the Athenian colonists of Lemnos, and secondly one knows from the springs that from the ” Athenian emigrants » created Athena was unarmed what probably the helmet taken by the head should make clear. A big number of classical Athena’s statuettes comparable with the reconstruction shows the goddess likewise without helmet on the head and underlines that this type must already have been famous in antiquity because he was quoted so often. With these copies the heads, by the way – correspondently to the head in Bologna – show a thin headband. All these indications support so correspondently the identification of the Dresden-Bologna-Statue with the masterpiece of the Phidias.

The cast bought in 1895 of the sculpture hall already corresponds to just two years before published reconstruction suggestion of Furtwängler, that head and body to one single statue type angsshören. From this fact one can understand, what a big meaning the studies of Adolf Furtwängler for the archeology at that time had, and how quick the new research results also became in the Basel sculpture hall rezipiert.

In the archaeological research this statue type is demanded as “Athena Lemnia”. Besides, the epithet of the goddess refers offshore Greek island Lemnos on of the coast of today’s Turkey. This lay with a strategically very favorable position; from here one could control in the antiquity the commercial routes to the Black Sea and protect the goods deliveries coming from this region (especially grain). That’s why the island became in the 5-th century B.C. a kind of Athenian colony. Although Lemnos counted as allies of Athens, her policy was strongly influenced by the Athenians. In this sense the transmission of Athenian citizens after this island played an important role. They should represent the interests of own hometown, and guarantee at the same time the loyalty of the local inhabitants. In connection with such a transmission the endowment of Athena-Standbildes on the Acropolis is covered by Athens: Greek author Pausanias reports since about a bronze statue standing with the Propyläen of the Athenian town goddess which received the epithet “Lemnia” on account of the special circumstances of her Weihung. As a creator of this figure famous in the antiquity artist Phidias with whom, among the rest, also the figürliche decoration of the Parthenons was entrusted is delivered.

In 1893 the German archeologist Adolf Furtwängler suggested connecting the marble torso in Dresden with the head in Bologna and recognizing behind it this masterpiece already lost in the late antiquity of the Phidias. Indeed, the headless body issued in the Dresden Albertinum belongs to an Athena-Statue, because about the Peplos carried, with the head of the Gorgo-Medusa are provided Ägis a characteristic sign of this goddess. At that time, however, the women’s head decorated with a headband in the Museo Archeologico of Bologna was still called only “girl’s head”. Furtwängler allowed to join not only both reply parts by means of plaster casts, but complemented with his reconstruction also the arms lacking the torso and attributes (see fig. 2). In the right hand he added the helmet, because the supplemental head gets rid, and in the raised left arm of a lance.

Die «Athena Lemnia» in der Skulpturhalle

“Athena Lemnia” – the statue in Dresden and the head in Bologna

Original

Date: Roman marble copy of a Greek original around 440 B.C.
Material: Marble
Finding place: formerly collection Chigi
Location: Dresden, Albertinum (body), Bologna, Museo Archeologico (head)
Height: 200 cms

Cast

Inv.-Nr .: In 1895-2 (sh 107)
Origin: Dresden, Abgussformerei
Material: Gypsum, patinates

Work consideration

The statue unites in the cast a marble head in Bologna with a marble torso in Dresden. The so wiedergewonnene figure shows goddess Athena who carries übergürteten Peplos, the left arm holds upraised and at an object in her lowered rights looks. The work full of quality, in particular in the head with the finely worked on hair waves and the well-balanced features is noteworthy and sends the forming the basis Greek original in the time around 440 B.C.

"Invitation to the Dance" Greek Hellenistic (Greco-Roman Period) reconstruction in the 19th. Century by Prof. Wilhelm Klein, of Karlova University (Charles University, Prague)

Venus de Medici - Plaster Munich Collection

Laokoon - Plaster Munich Cast Collection

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Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

Notes

Chapter 1— Preview

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

Preface and Acknowledgments

Chapter 1— Preview

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

FLORENCE, TUSCANY, ITALY

PALAZZO VECCHIO

FIRENZE

FLORENCE, TUSCANY, ITALY

COURTYARD, PALAZZO VECCHIO

FIRENZE

FLORENCE, TUSCANY, ITALY

PALAZZO VECCHIO

FIRENZE

Pierino from Vinci

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

St Sebastian

Ottaviano Grimaldi

Gerolama Campagna (1549-c. 1625)

High Altar

High Altar

Neptune with Sea-Horse

Tomb of Pope Paul III

Tomb of Pope Paul III, 1549-75 Bronze and marble Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

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Giambologna

Narrator of the Catholic Reformation

Mary Weitzel Gibbons

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

Tomb of Pope Paul III

Guglielmo della Porta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Biography

Selected works

Life

“Athena Lemnia” – the statue in Dresden and the head in Bologna

Original

Cast

Work consideration

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Chapter 1—
Preview

Tomb of Pope Paul III, 1549-75 Bronze and marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican