Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)

LOUIS A. WALDMAN: A Drawing by Tribolo for Montorsoli's Lost Hercules and Antaeus at Castello

A DRAWING BY TRIBOLO FOR MONTORSOLI'S LOST HERCULES AND ANTAEUS AT CASTELLO LOUIS A. WALDMAN The project of Niccolö Tribolo (1500-1550) for Cosimo de' Medici's Villa at Castello, begun in 1537-1538, was one of the most ambitious garden plans of the Italian Renaissance.

1 As A

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asari states in the Lives, if all the works that were planned had been executed, the garden at Castello would have been the richest, most magnificent, and most ornate garden in Europe.

2 Yet even though the garden, as completed after Tribolo's death, comprises only a fragment of the elaborate plan proposed by the artist and his collaborator, the scholar Benedetto Varchi, it unquestionably does represent one of the most richly symbolic designs of the sixteenth century. Its main axis is defined by the two large freestanding fountains crowned by a pair of bronze statues: the Hercules and Antaeus executed by Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511-1592) between 1559 and 1560, and Fiorenza, carried out by Giambologna (1529-1608) in 1572. The composition of Ammannati's Hercules group (fig. 1) clearly recalls the famous bronze statuette by Antonio Pollaiuolo (c. 1432-1498) which was in the Palazzo Medici at least as early as 1492 (fig. 2). Moreover, its design, if we can believe Vasari, is also indebted to another statue, made of marble and of similarly monumental scale, for which it was itself the replacement. The original statue of Hercules and Antaeus for the Fontana del Labirinto is now lost; it was begun in 1538, following Tribolo's design and under his direct supervision, by the sculptor Era' Giovan Antonio Montorsoli (1507-1563). But before the marble group was finished, Tribolo's rival Baccio Bandinelli (1493-1560) persuaded the ducal majordomo, Pier Francesco Riccio, that Montorsoli was botching the carving. Bandinelli was allowed to destroy the statue and

—adding insult to injury

—to cannibalize its marble for the architectural membering of his own project, the tomb of Giovanni delle Bande Nere.

3 Vasari reports that the lost Hercules and Antaeus begun by Montorsoli resembled the version later made by Ammannati, in that a jet of water was meant