Chasing genius - selected works by Baccio Bandinelli

 

Adam and Eve, circa 1548-1551.

The Drunkenness of Noah, 1539.

Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence, later Grand Duke of Tuscany, circa 1539-40.

Bandinelli's best-known work, Hercules and Cacus, 1525-34.

The Hercules and Cacus was meant as a pendant to Michelangelo's David; both works flank the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria.
(The David was replaced by a replica in 1910.) The commission had first been given to Michelangelo but then, for political reasons, reassigned. The group has
always been compared unfavorably to the celebrated David; after its unveiling, Cellini referred to Hercules' overwrought musculature as "a sack full of melons,"

Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence, later Grand Duke of Tuscany, circa 1544.

The Young Monk (probably San Nicola da Tolentino), circa 1550.

Sleeping Hercules, circa 1550s.

Bust of a young man, circa 1540.

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Portrait of Bandinelli, by Andrea del Sarto, circa 1512.

Baccio Bandinelli (also called Bartolomeo Brandini; 12 November 1493, Florence - shortly before 7 February 1560, Florence), Italian Mannerist sculptor, draughtsman, and painter. The son of a prominent Florentine goldsmith, he first apprenticed in his father's shop. Still a boy, he was then apprenticed under Giovanni Francesco Rustici, a sculptor friend of Leonardo da Vinci. Among his earliest works was a Saint Jerome in wax, made for Giuliano de' Medici. Giorgio Vasari, a former pupil in Bandinelli's workshop, claimed that the artist was driven by jealousy of Cellini and Michelangelo, and that he had a lifelong obsession with the latter. Modern commentators believe this may have contributed to the relative failure of some of his works: "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." They have also remarked on the vitality of his 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." He had a penchant for self-portraits, both hidden and overt, and many appear in his finished works. His sons Clemente, a collaborator in his studio, and Michelangelo Bandinelli were also sculptors.

Self-portrait, circa 1550.