Bartolomeo Ammannati, Fountain of Neptune, Piazza della Signoria, Florence

Bartolomeo Ammannati (18 June 1511 – 13 April 1592) was an Italian architect and sculptor, born at Settignano, near Florence. Ammanati's best-known sculpture is the Fountain of Neptune (c. 1560–75) in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence. Made of marble and bronze, the fountain was commissioned in 1565 and designed by Baccio Bandinelli. The central figure was carved out of a colossal block of marble that had been begun by Bandinelli before his death (1560), and this inhibited Ammanati's treatment. More successful are the surrounding bronze figures of four recumbent deities and a troop of gesticulating fauns and satyrs (all 1571–75), modelled and cast under his supervision by a team of assistants. The general design and character of these figures, as well as an allegorical female nude statuette personifying Ops (1572–73) epitomize Ammanati's mature style.

Bartolomeo Ammannati, Fountain of Neptune, Piazza della Signoria, Florence [1]

From 1563 and 1565, Ammannati and his assistants, among them Giambologna, sculpted the block of marble that had been chosen by Bandinelli. He took Grand Duke Cosimo I as model for Neptune's face.
The fountain was designed and sculpted for the most part by Ammanati. It was unveiled in 1565 on the occasion of the marriage between Francesco I dei Medici and Giovanna d'Austria. The statue was meant to highlight Cosimo's goal of establishing a Florentine Naval force. The ungainly sea god was placed at the corner of the Palazzo Vecchio within sight of Michelangelo's David statue, and the then 87-year-old sculptor is said to have scoffed at Ammannati— saying that he had ruined a beautiful piece of marble— with the ditty: "Ammannati, Ammanato, che bel marmo hai rovinato!"[5]

Bartolomeo Ammannati, Fountain of Neptune, 1559-75, Marble and bronze, Piazza della Signoria, Florence [2]

Ammannati continued work on this fountain for a decade, adding around the perimeter a cornucopia of demigod figures: bronze reclining river gods, laughing satyrs and marble sea horses emerging from the water.

Though private commissions took place during this period, public works were not often produced. Commissioning sculpture for exterior, public areas was a tactic the Republic used in order to portray Florence as a reincarnation of Rome. Rome had a grand tradition of producing sculptures for prominent public spaces (such as the fora) to proclaim her glory. By communicating Rome to be a predecessor of Florence, Florence was seen as a conquering city-state capable of expansion (due to the far-reaching power of the ancient Roman empire), as well as prestige, for being able to lay the claim of being heir to Rome's glory [4].


Map Fontana del Nettuno \| Enlarge map
The imposing Neptune is the fulcrum of the fountain, where four horses pull his chariot amidst bronze statues of mythological creatures. The pedestal of the fountain is decorated with the mythical figures of Scylla and Charybdis, two Greek sea monsters [9].




Bartolomeo Ammannati, Fontana del Nettuno, Piazza della Signoria, Florence. Detail of the chariot drawn by sea-horses, symbolizing Florence's command of the Mediterranean.[6]
The bronze statues which decorate the fountain are the work of Flemish artist, Jean de Boulogne. The fountain features bronze figures of river gods, smiling satyrs, marble sea horses emerging from the water and a giant sea shell [9].


Statua di bronzo, dettaglio della Fontana di Nettuno a Firenze, situato in Piazza della Signoria , scultore Bartolomeo Ammannati, 1563-1565 [8]
Giambologna sculpted a similar statue for the similar fountain in Bologna in the 1560s. Three years after the competition for the Fountain of Neptune in Florence, the authorities in Bologna approached Giambologna to make a statue of Neptune and many subsidiary figures and ornaments for a fountain in the centre of their city. Even before working on the fountain in Bologna, however, Giambologna had begun in Florence the first of a series of celebrated marble groups that in their mastery of complex twisting poses mark one of the high-points of Mannerist art: Samson Slaying a Philistine (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, c. 1561-62); Florence Triumphant over Pisa (Bargello, Florence, completed 1575); The Rape of a Sabine (Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. 1581-82); Hercules and the Centaur (Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, 1594-1600). Giambologna worked extensively for the Medici and his monument to Duke Cosimo I (1587-95) was the first equestrian statue made in Florence and an immensely influential design, becoming the pattern for similar statues all over Europe.


[7]
Bartolomeo Ammannati chose to represent the face of Neptune as a great figure from the history of Florence. Neptune’s face was carved to resemble Cosimo De’ Medici, one of the first dukes of Tuscany, who had always envisioned a monument to the roman god of the sea in the center of Florence. During his reign, Cosimo De’ Medici had great ambitions for turning Florence into a naval super power in the world [9].
In 1550 Ammannati married Laura Battiferri, an elegant poet and an accomplished woman.[4] Later in his life he had a religious crisis, influenced by Counter-Reformation piety, which resulted in condemning his own works depicting nudity, and he left all his possessions to the Jesuits. He died in Florence in 1592.

[1] Photo by G.Lanting, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. [2] Photo by Björn S., licenziato in base ai termini della licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione 3.0 Unported [3] Bilo, Denis, Sculpture in site: Examining the relationship between sculpture and site in the principal works of Giambologna, 2019. Masters thesis, University of Essex. [4] Deibel, Danielle Marie, The Piazza della Signoria: The Visualization of Political Discourse through Sculpture. © 2017, some rights reserved. The Piazza della Signoria: The Visualization of Political Discourse through Sculpture by Danielle Marie Deibel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu. [Thesis Combined.pdf (3.58 MB) View\|Download] [5] Isabella de' Medici, by Caroline P. Murphy, page 76. Murphy only mentions the phrase Ammannati Ruinati as Michelangelo's words. It appears the statue received a cool public welcome relative to the David. [6] Photo by Francesco Bandarin, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribuzione 3.0 Unported license. This file has been provided by UNESCO (unesco.org) as part of a GLAM-Wiki partnership. It is also available on the UNESCO website. [7] Photo by Joanbanjo, licenziato in base ai termini della licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione 3.0 Unported [8] Photo by Sailko, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. [9] Fountain of Neptune \| meetingwater \| https://meetingwater.wordpress.com New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article Neptune (mythology) in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution.
Fountain of Neptune \| Gallery of images Bilo, Denis, Sculpture in site: Examining the relationship between sculpture and site in the principal works of Giambologna, 2019. Masters thesis, University of Essex. Denis Bilo examines how sculptures respond to their sites, be it through design choices made during production, or how the sculptural elements were impacted by installing them in the given sites. DenisI analyse the spaces of the sites in relation to the sculptures, seeking to determine how the sculptures changed or enhanced their sites, and how the spaces influenced the ways in which viewers engaged with the sculptures.





This article incorporates material from the Wikipedia article Bartolomeo Ammannati published under the GNU Free Documentation License.