Bologna Giovanni da
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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.
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 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 Slaying a Philistine, for
Francesco de' Medici (1562)
He delighted in solving the complex spatial problems of three
intertwined figures in his famous 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. 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.
