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| GIOVAN BATTISTA NALDINI (Florence 1537 – 1591 Florence)
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| Design for an Equestrian Statue
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Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk;
Inscription "In sulla piazza di S. Pullinari qua[n]do vi si metesse/ una statua equestre come alquad[er]no 30 s’e fatto / questo schizzo per un po di saggio", and in a different hand, "Giorgio Vasari"
269 x 170 mm
PROVENANCE
Christopher Powney, in 1970
Lodewijk Houthakker, Amsterdam
LITERATURE
P. Fuhring, Design into Art. Drawings for Architecture and Ornament. The Lodewijk Houthakker Collection, vol. II, p. 658, no. 978, ill.
This spirited drawing is a design for the equestrian allegorical sculpture erected in Piazza Sant’ Apollinare, florence, which formed part of the elaborate civic decorations for the wedding celebrations of Francesco de´ Medici and his bride, Giovann of Austria in 1565. While the complex iconographical programme was devised by Vincenzo Borghini, Giorgio Vasari was responsible for the overall desing and for supervising the numerous Florentine and foreign artists involved in the execution of the wedding apparato. Thus Borghini summarized the character of their collaboration on the project: “...lascio a me la cura della invenzione, a voi dei disegni e dei modi.
As Fuhring has pointed out, the equestrian sculpture, gilded as to imitate bronze, was executed by Vincenzo Danti. Based on contemporary descriptions the sculpture was nearly identical to that depicted in the present drawing, which clearly reveals the hand of Battista Naldini, an important member of Vasari’s workshop and strongly involved in the desing of the wedding decorations. Comparable drawings by Naldini's are in the Louvre and at Lille.
The subject of the statue was the triumph of good government over civic chaos and immorality, while the frieze below, as Fuhring has noted, fittingly shows the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs.
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