BACCIO BANDINELLI

Speranza

Baccio Bandinelli was a Medicean artist, by conviction.

The commission for his first work ever, a "Saint Peter" for the Duomo, was due to Giuliano de' Medici, Duc of Nemours.

Bandinelli enjoyed the support of Giulio de' Medici, the future PAPA CLEMENTE VIII, for whom Bandinelli carved a political allegory in the form of an "ORFEO" for the cortile of the Palazzo Medici, and made a copy of the "LACOONTE."

Bandinelli enjoyed the patronage of Alessandro de' Medici, who entrusted him with the tombs of the two Medici popers: LEO X and CLEMENTE VIII, in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Roma.

His most ambitious work, the ERCOLE E CACO, carved from a block of marble which Buonarroti had coveted, was greeted critically when it was installed in the Piazza della Signoria, and the authors of some of the political lampoons that "ERCOLE E CACO" elicited were imprisoned by Duke Alessandro.

Alessandro's patronage was continued by Cosimo I, who entrusted Bandinelli with a monument to his father, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, for San Lorenzo, and with a series of portrait statues of members of the Medici family for the UDIENZA of the Palazzo della Signoria.