BUONTALENTI, BERNARDO. - Architect, sculptor, painter and miniaturist, b. in Florence ca. 1536, d. there on 6 June 1608. A very notable personality of Florentine Mannerism, B. established himself above all in architecture, showing an affinity of taste with his contemporary Ammannati (v.), whom however he surpassed through a more immediate inventiveness. A concrete requirement for B. is the plastic-decorative value of coats of arms, festoons, shells, volutes, etc., in bizarre pre-Baroque developments that do not overlay but are born together with the architectural organism, which therefore often takes on the preciousness, and ultimately the singular value, of an enlarged piece of goldsmith's work.
B.'s activity, in the service of the dukes Cosimo I and his son Francesco, was extremely vast. It manifested itself above all in the architecture of palaces and villas, in the forms that characterize the surroundings of Florence. His first architectural work was the Villa of Pratolino, later demolished; worth remembering are the Casino Mediceo, today the Palazzo di Giustizia (1574), and, again in Florence, the Grotta di Boboli, intended for the placement there of Michelangelo's four Prigioni, a part of the Palazzo Nonfinito, etc. He executed other secondary works in S. Maria Maggiore and in S. Spirito, the facade of the church of S. Trinita and, for the same church, the staircase leading up to the choir, now in S. Stefano. He executed designs and a model (museum of the Opera) for the facade of the Florentine cathedral, in a form proper to late Mannerism, already sensitive to the imminent taste of the Baroque.
His activity as a decorator and inventor of stage sets and machines for festivities and spectacles, and of fireworks, was also vast, for which he was called « dalle girandole ». - See Pl. XV.
Bibliography
Luigi Grassi