- Bartolommeo Bandinelli
Bartolommeo (or Baccio) Bandinelli, actually Bartolommeo Brandini (
October 17 ,1493 – shortly beforeFebruary 7 ,1560 [The date of his burial.] ), was a prominentRenaissance Italian sculptor, draughtsman and painter. [The paintings that may be attributed to Bandinelli are only a handful.]Biography
Bandinelli was the son of a prominent Florentine
goldsmith , [ 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 ofSiena in preparation for his induction into the chivalric Order of St James by Charles V, in Rome, 1530.] and first apprenticed in his shop. As a boy, he was apprenticed underGiovanni Francesco Rustici , a sculptor friend ofLeonardo da Vinci . Among his earliest works was a "Saint Jerome" in wax, made for Giuliano de' Medici, identified as Bandinelli's byJohn Pope-Hennessy Giorgio Vasari , a former pupil in Bandinelli's workshop, claimed Bandinelli was driven by jealousy ofBenvenuto Cellini andMichelangelo ; and recounts that: :"(When) the cartoon of Michelangelo in the Council Hall ("Battle of Cascina" at Palazzo Vecchio) [http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/m/michelan/4drawing/cascina/index.html] 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 Michael Angelo. 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. [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.]
Bandinelli was a leader in the group of Florentine Mannerists who were inspired by the revived interest in
Donatello attendant on the installation of Donatello's bas-relief panels for the pulpit in San Lorenzo, 1515. The artist presented his relief of the "Deposition" to Charles V at Genoa in 1529; though the relief has been lost, a bronze from it byAntonio Susini in 1600 (Musée du Louvre ) shows the decisive inspiration of Donatello's emotional pitch and intensity; [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.] Bandinelli made several drawings of the Donatello reliefs, though later in life he disparaged them in a letter to Cosimo I de' Medici. [Fulton 1997:178 note 15]His sculptures have never inspired the admiration given those of Michelangelo, specially the colossal (5.05 m) marble group of "
Hercules andCacus " (completed in 1534) in thePiazza della Signoria , Florence, and "Adam and Eve" in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, which both stand within sight of some of Michelangelo's masterworks. Vasari said of him "He did nothing but make "bozzetti" and finished little", and modern commentators have remarked on the vitality of Bandinelli's terracotta models contrasted with the finished marbles: "all the freshness of his first approach to a subject was lost in the laborious execution in marble... A brilliant draughtsman and excellent small-scale sculptor, he had a morbid fascination for colossi which he was ill-equipped to execute. His failure as a sculptor on a grand scale was accentuated by his desire to imitate Michelangelo." [Otto Kurz, "A Model for Bandinelli's Statue of Cosimo I" "The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs" 85 No. 500 (November 1944, pp. 280-83) p. 280. The terracotta "bozzetto" is at theWallace Collection , London.]"Hercules and Cacus" was commissioned by the
Medici popeClement VII , who had been shown a wax model. The supplied block ofCarrara marble wasn't big enough to execute Bandinelli's wax model. He had to make new wax models, one of which was chosen by the pope as the final draft. Bandinelli had already carved the sculpture as far as the abdomen of Hercules, when during the 1527Sack of Rome , the pope was taken prisoner. Meanwhile, in Florence, republican enemies of the Medici took advantage of the chaos to exileIppolito de' Medici . Bandinelli, a supporter of the Medici, was also exiled. In 1530 Emperor Charles V retook Florence after a long siege. Pope Clement VII subsequently installed his illegitimate sonAlessandro de' Medici as duke of Tuscany. Bandinelli then returned to Florence and continue work on the statue till completed in 1534, and transported from theOpera del Duomo to its present marblepedestal . But from the moment it was unveiled, it faced ridicule; Cellini compared the ponderous group to 'a sac full of melons'. Afterwards, the Bandinelli tried to sabotage Cellini's career. The statue was restored between February and April 1994.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
Giorgio Vasari andFrancesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati) . His sons Clemente Bandinelli, a collaborator in Baccio's studio, and Michelangelo Bandinelli were also sculptors.Among Baccio Bandinelli's works are:
* copy ofLaocoon , at the time in theCortile del Belvedere , commissioned byPope 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 MediciPope Clement VII could not bear to part with it, sent some antiquities to the King of France in its stead, and sent Baccio's "Laocoon" to Florence. It remains at theUffizi .
*Tombs of theMedici popes Leo X and Clement VII inSanta Maria sopra Minerva (1536-41).
*"Bust of Cosimo I de' Medici" (c. 1539-40) (Metropolitan Museum of Art , acc. no. 1987.280)
*"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 [Bandinelli's penchant for self-portraits, both hidden and overt, is well documented. Bandinelli's terracotta "Head in 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.] 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 theBoboli Gardens
* "Orpheus" for Palazzo Vecchio, now in the courtyard of thePalazzo 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 theBargello 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 theMuseo dell'Opera del Duomo ; "Saint Peter", one of eight apostles by various sculptors in the piers of the crossing.
* Works inPalazzo 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
*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 "ca" 1517 is conserved at theUffizi .Notes
References
* [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vasari/vasari22.htm Giorgio Vasari, "Vite...":] 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, ed. "Baccio Bandinelli (1493-1560)". (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum) 1988. Exhibition catalogue of seventy-four Bandinelli drawings. ISBN 0-914160-06-0
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