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Giambologna


Mercury, bronze figure by Giambologna, 1580; in the Bargello …
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Mercury, bronze figure by Giambologna, 1580; in the Bargello … (credit: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)
(born 1529, Douai, Spanish Neth. — died Aug. 13, 1608, Florence) Flemish-born Italian sculptor. After studies under Jacques Dubroeucq, he went to Rome in 1550, where his style was influenced by Hellenistic sculpture and the works of Michelangelo; he settled in Florence in 1552. He produced many of his most important works for the Medici family, but it was the Fountain of Neptune (1563 – 66) in Bologna that made him famous. His bronze equestrian statue of Cosimo I (1587 – 93), the first of its kind made in Florence, became a pattern for similar statues all over Europe. His garden sculptures — notably for Florence's Boboli Gardens and for three Medici villas, including the colossal Apennine (1570 – 80) at Pratolino — enjoyed great popularity. He was also a prolific manufacturer of bronze statuettes; many of his working models still survive. He was the outstanding sculptor of Italian Mannerism.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: Bologna, Giovanni,
or Giambologna (jōvän'nē bōlō'nyä, jäm'bōlō'nyä) , 1524–1608, Flemish sculptor, whose real name was Jean Bologne or Boulogne. Though born in Douai, France, he trained in Flanders. He is identified chiefly with the Italian Renaissance as one of its greatest sculptors. He lived briefly in Rome before moving to Florence. His masterpiece, Flying Mercury, is in the Bargello, Florence. The Rape of the Sabines (Florence), with its spiraling forms and multiple viewpoints, is one of the finest examples of mannerist sculpture. This work exerted a profound influence on later art. Among his other works are the equestrian statues in Florence of the Medicis, one of Ferdinand I (see Browning's poem “The Statue and the Bust”) and another of Cosimo I; two fountains in the Boboli Gardens, Florence; the bronze doors of the cathedral in Pisa; a Neptune fountain in Bologna; and the colossal statue Apennines at Pratolino. There are two of Giambologna's elegant statuettes of the Evangelists in the Metropolitan Museum and one at the museum of the Univ. of Kansas.
 
Wikipedia: Giambologna
"Portrait of Giovanni Bologna" by Hendrick Goltzius
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"Portrait of Giovanni Bologna" by Hendrick Goltzius

Giambologna, born as Jean Boulogne, also known as Giovanni Da Bologna and Giovanni Bologna (1529 - August 13 1608), was a sculptor, known for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist style.

The Rape of the Sabine Woman (1574-82), Florence.
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The Rape of the Sabine Woman (1574-82), Florence.

Biography

Giambologna was born in Douai, Flanders (now in France). After youthful studies in Antwerp with the architect-sculptor Jacques du Broeucq, he moved to Italy in 1550, and studied in Rome. Giambologna made detailed study of the sculpture of classical antiquity. He was also much influenced by Michelangelo, but developed his own Mannerist style, with perhaps less emphasis on emotion and more emphasis on refined surfaces, cool elegance and beauty. Pope Pius IV gave Giambologna his first major commission, the colossal bronze Neptune and subsidiary figures for the Fountain of Neptune (the base designed by Tommaso Laureti, 1566) in Bologna. Giambologna spent his most productive years in Florence, where he had settled in 1553. He became the Medici court sculptor, and died in Florence at the age of 79. He was interred in a chapel he designed himself in the Santissima Annunziata.

Work

Giambologna became well known for a fine sense of action and movement, and a refined, differentiated surface finish. Among his most famous works are the Mercury (of which he did four versions), poised on one foot, supported by a zephyr. The god raises one arm to point heavenwards, in a gesture borrowed from the repertory of classical rhetoric[1] that is characteristic of Giambologna's maniera.

Giambologna's several depictions of Venus established a canon of proportions and set models for the goddess's representation that were influential for two generations of sculptors, in Italy and in the North. He created allegories strongly promoting Medicean political propaganda, such as Florence defeating Pisa and, less overtly, Samson defeating a Philistine, for Francesco de' Medici (1562)[2]

Hercules and Nessus (1599), Florence
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Hercules and Nessus (1599), Florence

He delighted in solving the complex spatial problems of three intertwined figures in his famous The Rape of the Sabine Women (1574-82). The subject was not finally determined until after it had been set up in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence's Piazza della Signoria. Hercules beating the Centaur Nessus (1599) is also a conscious tour de force.[3] It is also in the Loggia dei Lanzi.

The equestrian statue of Cosimo I de' Medici also in Florence, was completed by his studio assistant Pietro Tacca.

Giambologna provided as well as many sculptures for garden grottos and fountains in the Boboli Gardens of Florence and at Pratolino, and the bronze doors of the cathedral of Pisa. For the grotto of the Villa Medicea of Castello he sculpted a series of studies of individual animals, from life, which may now be viewed at the Bargello. Small bronze reductions of many of his sculptures were prized by connoisseurs at the time and ever since, for Giambologna's reputation has never suffered eclipse.

Giambologna was an important influence on later sculptors through his pupils Adriaen de Vries and Pietro Francavilla who left his atelier for Paris in 1601, as well as Pierre Puget who spread Giambologna's influence throughout Northern Europe, and in Italy on Pietro Tacca, who assumed Giambologna's workshop in Florence, and in Rome on Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi.

Architettura exemplifies the long limbs of Giambologna's influential ideal female type (Bargello)
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Architettura exemplifies the long limbs of Giambologna's influential ideal female type (Bargello)

Notes

  1. ^ Compare the figure of Plato in Raphael's School of Athens.
  2. ^ The marble figure for a Medici fountain, the only large marble group by Giambologna to have left Florence, was given to the Duke of Lerma, then to Charles, Prince of Wales at the time of negotiations for the Spanish Match; it was given by George III to Sir Thomas Worsley, at Hovingham Hall, Norfolk; it was purchased in 1953 for the Victoria and Albert Museum through the Art Fund ([1]; [2]).
  3. ^ A bronze variant is in the Rijksmuseum [3].

References

Gloria Fossi, et al, "Italian Art", Florence, Giunti Gruppo Editoriale, 2000, ISBN 88-09-01771-4

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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