Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence

Ambitious Form describes the transformation of Italian sculpture during the neglected half century between the death of Michelangelo and the rise of Bernini. The book follows the Florentine careers of three major sculptors--Giambologna, Bartolomeo Ammanati, and Vincenzo Danti--as they negotiated the politics of the Medici court and eyed one another's work, setting new aims for their art in the process. Only through a comparative look at Giambologna and his contemporaries, it argues, can we understand them individually--or understand the period in which they worked.

Michael Cole shows how the concerns of central Italian artists changed during the last decades of the Cinquecento. Whereas their predecessors had focused on specific objects and on the particularities of materials, late sixteenth-century sculptors turned their attention to models and design. The iconic figure gave way to the pose, individualized characters to abstractions. Above all, the multiplicity of master crafts that had once divided sculptors into those who fashioned gold or bronze or stone yielded to a more unifying aspiration, as nearly every ambitious sculptor, whatever his training, strove to become an architect.

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Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence

Ambitious Form describes the transformation of Italian sculpture during the neglected half century between the death of Michelangelo and the rise of Bernini. The book follows the Florentine careers of three major sculptors--Giambologna, Bartolomeo Ammanati, and Vincenzo Danti--as they negotiated the politics of the Medici court and eyed one another's work, setting new aims for their art in the process. Only through a comparative look at Giambologna and his contemporaries, it argues, can we understand them individually--or understand the period in which they worked.

Michael Cole shows how the concerns of central Italian artists changed during the last decades of the Cinquecento. Whereas their predecessors had focused on specific objects and on the particularities of materials, late sixteenth-century sculptors turned their attention to models and design. The iconic figure gave way to the pose, individualized characters to abstractions. Above all, the multiplicity of master crafts that had once divided sculptors into those who fashioned gold or bronze or stone yielded to a more unifying aspiration, as nearly every ambitious sculptor, whatever his training, strove to become an architect.

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Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence

Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence

by Michael W. Cole
Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence

Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence

by Michael W. Cole

eBook

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Overview

Ambitious Form describes the transformation of Italian sculpture during the neglected half century between the death of Michelangelo and the rise of Bernini. The book follows the Florentine careers of three major sculptors--Giambologna, Bartolomeo Ammanati, and Vincenzo Danti--as they negotiated the politics of the Medici court and eyed one another's work, setting new aims for their art in the process. Only through a comparative look at Giambologna and his contemporaries, it argues, can we understand them individually--or understand the period in which they worked.

Michael Cole shows how the concerns of central Italian artists changed during the last decades of the Cinquecento. Whereas their predecessors had focused on specific objects and on the particularities of materials, late sixteenth-century sculptors turned their attention to models and design. The iconic figure gave way to the pose, individualized characters to abstractions. Above all, the multiplicity of master crafts that had once divided sculptors into those who fashioned gold or bronze or stone yielded to a more unifying aspiration, as nearly every ambitious sculptor, whatever his training, strove to become an architect.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781400836420
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 07/12/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 400
File size: 71 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Michael W. Cole is professor of art history at Columbia University. He is the author of Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture and the coeditor of The Idol in the Age of Art, among other books.

Table of Contents

Introduction i

Chapter 1: Models 21

Chapter 2: Professions 51

Chapter 3: Naturalism 90

Chapter 4: Pose 121

Chapter 5: Sculpture as Architecture 158

Chapter 6: Chapels 193

Chapter 7: Sculpture in the City 244

Conclusion 283

Photo Credits 287

Notes 293

Acknowledgments 353

Index 357

What People are Saying About This

Claire Farago

Beautifully written and extraordinarily well-researched, this book makes a groundbreaking contribution to the study of Florentine art of the late Cinquecento, a period that remains a kind of black hole in the scholarship. The chapters build in strength as the book unfolds and the last two are tours de force that inspire admiration and awe.
Claire Farago, University of Colorado

From the Publisher

"Ambitious Form is an authoritative, innovative, and important study—like no other book on early modern Italian sculpture, in any language, with which I am familiar. Original in its scope, methodology, and conclusions, it will, I am confident, be praised by specialists and students alike."—Steven F. Ostrow, University of Minnesota

"Beautifully written and extraordinarily well-researched, this book makes a groundbreaking contribution to the study of Florentine art of the late Cinquecento, a period that remains a kind of black hole in the scholarship. The chapters build in strength as the book unfolds and the last two are tours de force that inspire admiration and awe."—Claire Farago, University of Colorado

Ostrow

Ambitious Form is an authoritative, innovative, and important study—like no other book on early modern Italian sculpture, in any language, with which I am familiar. Original in its scope, methodology, and conclusions, it will, I am confident, be praised by specialists and students alike.
Steven F. Ostrow, University of Minnesota

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