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Florence
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| © 2008 |
Making the most of your time in Florence |
Updated 13 January 2008 |
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Famous Florentine Sculptors<
- Baccio Bandinelli (Bartolommeo Brandini) (1488–1560). He worked in the Salone del Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio, as well as making the statue of Hercules and Cacus, in Piazza della Signoria, and the statue of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, in Piazza San Lorenzo.
- Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) was also a goldsmith and writer. His magnificient bronze statur of Perseus decapitating the Medusa is to be found at the Loggia dei Lanzi, in Piazza della Signoria.
- Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi) (ca 1386–1466), perhaps the most famous of all Florentine sculptors after Michelangelo went to Rome at an early age with Brunelleschi to study the ancient masters. He was apprenticed to Ghiberti, working with him on the north bronze doors of the Baptistery. Inside he created the tomb of the deposed Pope John XIII. He also worked for Orsanmichele and his is the statue of St. George. His version of David is markedly different from Michelangelo’s vision, portraying an almost effeminate youth which is possibly closer to what David would have looked like when of the battle with Goliath, as he was not a fully-grown man, as seen by Michelangelo, but only a boy. Other statues of him are a wooden Mary Magdalene, the Marzocco, the lion that is one if the symbols of Florence, as well as the statue of Judith and Holofernes. He is buried at the Church of San Lorenzo.
- Giambologna (Jean Boulogne) (1529 -1608), the Flemish sculptor, settled in Italy in 1550. He was active in Florence, creating many masterpieces that still embellish the city. One example is "The Rape of the Sabine Women", housed in the Loggia dei Lanzi, in Piazza della Signoria.
- Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), the sculptor and goldsmith, is famous above all for the two sets of doors on the Baptistry. The latter pair, called by Michelangelo the Doors of Paradise, are one of the great works of the early Renaissance.
- Michelangelo Buonarotti (Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni) (1475–1564), was, together with Leonardo and Raphael, one of the three great artists of the High Renaissance. Though he was first of all a sculptor, as he was often wont to declare while painting his famous frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, is as also remembered as a painter and as a poet, having written a celebrated series of sonnets.
- Benedetto da Maiano (1442-1497), a sculptor, left some work in Florence: a pulpit at Santa Croce as well as some statues now housed at the Bargello.
- Andrea del Verrocchio (Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni) (Ca.1435-1488), the painter and scultor, left us mainly religious paintings. There is a stutue of his of Christ and St. Thomas at Orsanmichele.
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