BANDINELLI, Baccio

(Bartolomeo Brandini) (1493-1560)

A Florentine sculptor patronized by the Medici for nearly twenty-one years, Baccio Bandinelli is best known for producing Hercules and Cacus as the pen­dant to Michelangelo's* David; together they flanked the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria, the town hall of Florence. Born in Florence in 1493, Bandinelli was taught by his father, a Medicean goldsmith, and then entered the workshop of Giovanni Francesco Rustici, a Tuscan sculptor of some reputation who had trained under Andrea del Verrocchio and who also worked for the Medici, a happy circumstance that undoubtedly helped further to pave the way for Ban-dinelli establishing his own relationship with the Medici. A sculptor of ques­tionable talent who sought to emulate Michelangelo from an early age, he had an uncanny ability for acquiring ambitious commissions, only to leave many of them unfinished. Bandinelli's works are largely derivative of either classical models or contemporary masters, an acceptable characteristic based on "imita­tion" for an artist of the time. His works are noted for employing figures in contrived and often-awkward poses rendered with a ponderous heaviness and sterile hyperbole that is in actuality the antithesis of all that Michelangelo's sculpture represents.

Bandinelli's first major commission came in 1515 for a statue of St. Peter for Florence Cathedral, followed by work on the decorations for the entry of Leo X* into Florence and numerous commissions for Medici dukes and high clergy, including Orpheus and Cerberus (c. 1519), a full-size copy of the Hellenistic masterpiece the Laocoon (1520-24), and the tombs of Popes Leo X and Clement VII (1536-41) and of Duke Cosimo I's* father, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, in 1540. In Genoa after the expulsion of the Medici from Florence in 1527, he began work on a statue of Andrea Doria. Around 1529 he was made a knight of the Order of S. Iago and also established an academy commemorated in engravings by Agostino Veneziano and Eneo Vico. The shifting political for­tunes of the Medici caused the commission for Hercules and Cacus to be batted back and forth between Bandinelli and Michelangelo (to whom it had been awarded originally in 1508) until the Medici return to Florence, when Bandinelli was instructed to complete the sculpture. It was unveiled in 1534 to scathing criticism for its bulging musculature, which was later described by Benvenuto Cellini* as resembling a "sack of melons." Cellini's arrival in Florence marked the end to Bandinelli's near monopoly on Medici patronage of sculpture. The rivalry and resultant acrimony that existed between the two men is thoroughly described by Cellini in his autobiography as well as by Bandinelli in his own Memoriale, an account of his family and career. These two works, combined with Giorgio Vasari's* colorful life of the artist, provide significantly more information about the life and character of Bandinelli than is known about many artists of the period. Throughout his career Bandinelli was reviled by his con­temporaries for his lack of artistic ability and inspiration, for his arrogance and virulent tongue, and for his sly business practices. One of his last works, Christ and Nicodemus (c. 1554-59), made for his own memorial chapel in SS. An­nunziata in Florence, is perhaps one of his most sympathetic works, representing himself in the guise of Nicodemus, just as his lifelong model Michelangelo had done.

Bibliography

J. Poeschke, Michelangelo and His World: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance, 1996.

J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, 1970.

Rachel Hostetter Smith