Baccio Bandinelli Sculptor and Maestro (1493-1560) opens today at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. The show runs through 13 July.
Baccio Bandinelli, “artist of eternal fame,” as Vasari called him in his Lives, is the focus of the exhibition opening today that aims to restore Bandinelli’s position of merit in the panorama of Italian sculpture of the Maniera, and re-establish the truth about an artist that the critics of the past two centuries, even up until today, have condemned. The biography of Bandinelli – after those of Michelangelo, Vasari and Raphael – is the longest in Vasari’s Lives. It is also a troubled piece of writing, given that the two artists despised each other. In the end though, Vasari was forced to admit Bandinelli’s greatness, referring to him as “terribile di lingua e d’ingegno.”
Portrait of Cosimo de’Medici, bronze, Florence, Galleria Palatina
Hercules Seated on the Pelt of the Nemean Lion, red chalk, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
Prophet, marble, Florence, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
Studies of Heads, black chalk, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
Drunkenness of Noah, detail, marble, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello
Hercules and Cacus, Florence, Piazza della Signoria