GIAMBOLOGNA. - Jean Boulogne, called Giambologna, sculptor, b. at Douai in 1529, d. at Florence on 13 Aug. 1608. At first a pupil of the sculptor Jacques Dubroeucq in Antwerp, in 1545 he was in Rome, where he met Michelangelo. The encounter with this artist and the study of his works were an essential element of his formation.
In 1567, on the commission of Pius III, he completed the construction of the fountain of Neptune for the main square of Bologna, after a design by the Sicilian architect Tommaso Laurenti, and cast the great bronze statue of the sea god: one of his masterpieces. The sketch, also in bronze, is preserved in the Museo civico of that city. He then executed another Neptune, inferior to the one in Bologna, for the garden of Boboli, and a very nimble flying Mercury (1572) for the fountain of the Villa Medici in Rome, now in the Museo nazionale of Florence. Then in 1581 he executed the group of the Rape of the Sabines for the Loggia dei Lanzi, repeating the scene in a marvelous bas-relief on the base. He left many other works in Florence: the St. Luke in Orsanmichele, the Hercules slaying the centaur in the Loggia dei Lanzi, the statues of Cosimo I, completed in 1594, in the piazza della Signoria, and of Ferdinando de' Medici in the piazza della Santissima Annunziata. The sacred works of G. are also numerous, among which of particular importance are the bas-reliefs with scenes of the Passion in the Palazzo dell'Università of Genoa, the two reliefs, the Pietà and the Deposition (1588), executed for the antependium of the altar of the Cross in the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a bronze Crucifix in the chapel of the Soccorso at the Annunziata, where his tomb was placed, and two other Crucifixes, one in the Museum of the Palazzo Pitti, another in the Collegiata of Impruneta. G., among the greatest sculptors of his time, may be considered one of the last mannerists, but in some of his works some anticipation of the Baroque taste is already evident. - See plate XXX.
Bibliography5 works
Mario Massaccesi