Baccio Bandinelli
Baccio Bandinelli (also called Bartolomeo Brandini; 12 November 1493 – shortly before 7 February 1560
Biography
Bandinelli was the son of a prominent
Giorgio Vasari, a former pupil in Bandinelli's workshop, claimed Bandinelli was driven by jealousy of Benvenuto Cellini and Michelangelo; and recounts that:
(When) the cartoon of Michelangelo in the Council Hall ("Battle of Cascina" at Palazzo Vecchio)[4] was uncovered, and all the artists ran to copy it, and Baccio (most frequently) among (them),... having counterfeited the key of the chamber. In... 1512, Piero Soderini was deposed and the... Medici reinstated. In the tumult, therefore, Baccio, being by himself, secretly cut the cartoon into several pieces. Some said he did it that he might have a piece of the cartoon always near him, and others that he wanted to prevent other youths from making use of it; others again say that he did it out of affection for Leonardo da Vinci, or from the hatred he bore to Michelangelo. The loss anyhow to the city was no small one, and Baccio's fault very great.
Bandinelli's lifelong obsession with Michelangelo is a recurring theme in assessments of his career.[5]
Bandinelli was a leader in the group of Florentine Mannerists who were inspired by the revived interest in
His sculptures have never inspired the admiration given those of Michelangelo, especially the colossal (5.05 m) marble group of
Hercules and Cacus was commissioned by the
Bandinelli's drawings, which have in the past masqueraded as Michelangelos in connoisseurs' collections, have come into their own in the later twentieth century.
Among Bandinelli's pupils were Vasari and
Selected works
Baccio Bandinelli's works include:
- copy of the Laocoön group, at the time in the Cortile del Belvedere, commissioned by Pope Leo X as a gift to François I. Bandinelli boasted that he would exceed the original, and when he was finished, after a hiatus during the pontificate of Adrian VI, the Medici Pope Clement VII could not bear to part with it, sent some antiquities to the King of France in its stead, and sent Baccio's Laocoön to Florence. It remains at the Uffizi.
- Tombs of the (1536–41).
- Bust of Cosimo I de' Medici (c. 1539–40) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 1987.280) This had been locked away in a vault in a Swiss bank until a dealer's tip led the curator Olga Raggio to its rediscovery.[9]
- Monument to Giovanni delle Bande Nere (1540–54), a seated figure on a magnificent pedestal, in piazza San Lorenzo, Florence
- Pietà in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence, where Bandinelli portrayed himself[10]in the figure of Joseph of Arimathea. Bandinelli is buried in the chapel, with his wife Giacoma Doni.
- Ceres and Apollo (1552–1556) for niches in the façade of Buontalenti's grotto in the Boboli Gardens
- Orpheus for Palazzo Vecchio, now in the courtyard of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. One of Bandinelli's few signed works.
- Works for the Duomo, Florence, including the high altar and its Adam and Eve (1551), now in the Bargello and Pietà now in the crypt of Santa Croce; much-praised bas-reliefs made for the enclosure of the choir, designed by the architect Giuliano di Baccio d'Angnolo (1555), now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo; Saint Peter, one of eight apostles by various sculptors in the piers of the crossing.
- Works in Palazzo Vecchio, including, in the Audience Hall, a statue of Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and one of Pope Leo X blessing (finished after Bandinelli's death by Vincenzo de' Rossi)
- God the Father (1549) in Santa Croce cloister
- Andrea Doria as Neptune, outside Carrara Cathedral. When Carrara was lost for a short while to the Genoese Republic, Bandinelli was commissioned to sculpt Andrea Doria. But after the city was retaken by the Florentine Republic, being such a symbol of Genoese dominion was impermissible, the statue was renamed Neptune, the Roman sea divinity, a rechristening suggested by the fountain sea creatures at the statue's base.
- In the Bargello are also a number of lesser works: Noah (bas-relief), portrait busts of Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo I de' Medici, Venus, Leda, Hercules, Bacchus Cleopatra and a portrait bust of an unknown man.
- A youthful portrait by Andrea del Sarto c. 1517 is conserved at the Uffizi.
See also
- Portrait of a Lady known as Smeralda Bandinelliby Botticelli (portrait of Baccio's grandmother)
Notes
- ^ The date of his burial.
- ^ The paintings that may be attributed to Bandinelli are only a handful.
- ^ Michelangelo de Viviano de Brandini of Gaiuole and his noble wife Catarina, a daughter of Taddeo Ugolino. Bandinelli produced a falsified genealogy connecting him with the noble Bandinelli of Siena in preparation for his induction into the chivalric Order of St James by Charles V, in Rome, 1530.
- ^ "Web Gallery of Art, searchable fine arts image database".
- ^ Kathleen Weil-Garris, "Bandinelli and Michelangelo: A Problem of Artist's Identity", in Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H.W. Jansen ed. by M. Barasch and L.F. Sandler (New York) 1981.
- ^ Christopher Fulton, "Present at the Inception: Donatello and the Origins of Sixteenth-Century Mannerism" Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 60.2 (1997, pp. 166–199) p. 174 and fig. 9.
- ^ Fulton 1997:178 note 15
- ^ Kurz, Otto (November 1944). "A Model for Bandinelli's Statue of Cosimo I". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Vol. 85, no. 500. p. 280. The terracotta bozzetto is at the Wallace Collection, London.
- ^ Fox, Margalit (5 February 2009). "Olga Raggio, a Scholar and Art Curator, Dies at 82". The New York Times.
- ^ Bandinelli's penchant for self-portraits, both hidden and overt, is well documented. Bandinelli's terracotta Head of Saint Paul, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is actually a self-portrait. Izabella Galicka and Hanna Sygietyńska, "A Newly Discovered Self-Portrait by Baccio Bandinelli" The Burlington Magazine 134, No. 1077 (December 1992, pp. 805–807) p. 805 note.
References
- Giorgio Vasari, Vite...: Archived 14 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine Baccio Bandinelli. The classic brief anecdotal account of Baccio's career.
- Touring Club Italiano, Firenze e Dintorni (1922) 1964.
Further reading
- Louis A. Waldman, Baccio Bandinelli and Art at the Medici Court: A Corpus of Early Modern Sources (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004).
- Paola Barocchi, ed. Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento. (Milan: Ricciardi, 1974. (pp. 1359–1411: Baccio Bandinelli: Il Memoriale)
- Roger Ward, Baccio Bandinelli, 1493-1560: Drawings from British Collections. (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum) 1988. Exhibition catalogue of seventy-four Bandinelli drawings. ISBN 0-914160-06-0
Exhibition catalog
- Leonardo da Vinci: anatomical drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, exhibition catalog fully online as PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Bartolommeo Bandinelli (see index)