Tag: italian renaissance

Giambologna: “Oceanus”

Giambologna, “Oceanus”, 1576, Marble, Museo del Bargello, Florence, Italy

Born in the Flanders city of Douai in the year 1529, Jehan Boulongne, known as Giambologna, was a Flemish sculptor based in Italy, who was the last significant sculptor of the Italian Renaissance. Working in the period between the High Renaissance and the Baroque, Giambologna transformed the Florentine Mannerism of the mid-sixteenth century into a style of European significance.

In his youth, Giambologna studied in Antwerp under architect and sculptor Jacques Du Brœucq, a Flemish artist who worked in the Italianate style. In 1550, he relocated to Italy and studied the city’s Hellenistic sculptures, particularly those complex groupings of figures in action. Although heavily influenced by the work of Michelangelo, Giambologna developed his own Mannerist style with a particular emphasis on elegance and refined surfaces. Invested in the idea of beauty for its own sake, he created works that featured figures composed of graceful curves, sinuous lines and asymmetrical contrapposto stances.

Giambologna’s elongated Mannerist contoured figures revitalized the Florentine sculptural scene. He was a master of what became known in painting and sculpture as the figura serpentinata, the serpentine figure. Giambologna’s winding figures presented movement as well as expressions of aggression and fear. He enhanced the drama by offering his viewers more than a primary viewpoint of his work; Giambologna  specifically created works that could be circled and viewed from all sides. All the features in his work required great technical skill and a precise calculation to both the work process and the stress being placed on his materials.

Giambologna was awarded his first commission by Cardinal Borromeo for a large-scale bronze “Neptune” and secondary figures for a civic fountain in Bologna that would commemorate the election of the Cardinal’s uncle as Pope Pius IV. The over-life-size bronze figure of Neptune was based on an earlier design by Giambologna for a fountain in the city of Florence. His completed figure of Neptune was erected on Bologna’s fountain in 1566. This work led to Giambologna becoming the most important court sculptor of the Medici family.

Giambologna’s celebrated works include the 1578-1580 bronze “Mercury in Flight”, the first version of which is housed at Bologna’s Medieval Museum; the 1574-1582 marble “Abduction of a Sabine Woman” at the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence; the 1562 marble “Samson Slaying a Philistine” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the 1599 marble “Hercules and Nessus” in Florence’s Loggia dei Lanza.

A member of the prestigious Accademia delle Art del Disegno, Giambologna died in Florence at the age of seventy-nine in August of 1608. His work influenced later sculptors through his many pupils who traveled throughout Italy and northern Europe.

Notes: Oceanus was the Titan god of the River Okeanos and all of the earth’s rivers, wells and springs. In Giambologna’s sculpture, Oceanus stands with one foot atop the head of a river fish; this symbolizes his command over the animal and all river creatures. As with many of his sculptures, Giambologna carved his marble Oceanus in the round so the viewer can see the statue from all angles.

Commissioned in 1565, the 1576 marble “Oceanus” was designed for the piazza in front of the Pitti Palace and later erected on the axis of the Boboli Garden behind the palace. “Oceanus” was  removed early in the seventeenth-century to a site on the Isolotto near Porta Romana. This great marble figure, with its mass of over two tons and height of over three meters, is now preserved in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.

The art form of contrapposto, from the Latin ‘contraponere’ meaning ‘place against’, refers to an asymmetrical arrangement of the human figure in which the line of the arms and shoulders contrast with, while still balancing, those of the hips and legs.

Linguistic Professor Arnold Zwicky’s blog has an article, entitled “An Ideal Male Body”, that discusses both Giambologna’s marble “Oceanus” and his bronze work for the “Fountain of Neptune” at: https://arnoldzwicky.org/2023/09/15/an-ideal-male-body/

Top Insert Image: Hendrick Goltzius, “Portrait of Giambologna”, 1591, Mixed Media on Paper. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands

Second and Third Insert Images: Giambologna, “Oceanus”, 1576, Detail, Marble, Museo del Bargello, Florence, Italy

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Scipione Pulzone

Scipione Pulzone, “Portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni”, 1574, Oil on Canvas, 121.9 x 99.3 cm, Private Collection

Born in 1544 at the coastal city of Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples, Scipione Pulzone, also known as Il Gaetano, was a Neapolitan painter of the late Italian Renaissance. He painted many important religious works; however, he excelled in portraiture with exceptionally rendered artistic details. One of the most celebrated artists in Rome, Pulzone was also one of the most original portraitists of the Counter Reformation, that period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation in Europe.

Scipione Pulzone is believed to have been a student of Jacopino del Conte, an Italian Mannerist painter active in both Rome and Florence. His portrait style was influenced by the works of Raphael and the international style of work from the Hapsburg court in Austria, particularly the portraits done by Anthonis Mor. Mor’s formal style of court portraits, with grandiose and self-possessed ostentation, was extremely influential on court painters throughout Europe.

Many of Pulzone’s paintings, particularly his religious scenes, show the strong influence of painter Girolamo Siciolante de Sermoneta’s latter works, which were executed in the reformist naturalist style. Pulzone painted his “Mater Divinae Providentiae”, an image of Mary and the Child Jesus, around 1580. In 1664, the painting became the possession of the Barnabite Fathers who placed the art piece in a small chapel at the rear of Rome’s San Carlo ai Catinari church where it continues to draw many religious followers.

In 1593, Scipione Pulzone finished his 1588 commissioned altarpiece “The Lamentation”  for the Passion chapel on the right side of the Chiesa del Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Intended to complement the austere interior space of the church, this painting rejected popular stylistic motifs and avoided narrative anecdotal details to create a meditative, devotional icon. Finely rendered details such as the tears of the Virgin, the crown of thorns held by Saint John, and the pallor of Christ’s body are presented to the viewer for contemplation.

Pulzone worked in both the Florentine and Neapolitan courts, as well as, in Rome, where he was commissioned to paint the portraits of two Popes, Pius V and his successor Gregory XIII known for commissioning the Gregorian calendar. While in Rome, Pulzone painted two major works: the 1585 “Our Lady of the Assumption” for Rome’s church of San Silvestro al Quirinale and “Christ on the Cross” for Rome’s Santa Maria in Vallicella. 

Scipione Pulzone died in Rome on the first of February in 1598 at the age of fifty-four. 

Notes: Scipione Pulzone’s “The Lamentation”, originally at the  Chiesa del Gesù, was anonymously gifted to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1984 (Accession Number 1984.74). It is currently listed as not on view.

At the online Artsy, there is an article on Scipione Pulzone’s 1574 “Portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni”, which includes the history of the painting and Boncompagni’s life, as well as, the two men’s close personal relationship. Pulzone named his first-born son Giacomo (Jacopo is a variant of the classical name Giacomo) and Boncompagni was selected to became Giacomo’s godfather. This article is located at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/scipione-pulzone-called-il-gaetano-portrait-of-jacopo-boncompagni-three-quarter-length-in-armor

Top Insert Image: Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Unidentified Noblewomen, circa 1580-1589, Oil on Canvas, 119 x 91.2 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland 

Second Insert Image: Scipione Pulzone, “Self Portrait”, 1564, Oil on Canvas, 43.5 x 34.5 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

Bottom Insert Image: Scipione Pulzone, “Portrait of Urban Vii”, circa 1590, Oil on Canvas, 131 x 99 cm, Private Collection