Jupiter

Description

Vasari recalls in the life of Bandinelli that "to accompany the statue of Christ and finish the altar , he resolved to make the statue of God the Father for which a beautiful marble had come from Carrara. Already he had led it a long way forward and made it half naked for the use of Jupiter, when not pleasing the Duke, and Baccio still seeming to think that he had some defect, he left it as it was and so it is still in the work." Milanesi notes that all trace of the sculpture has been lost, while it was already in Boboli by the early 19th century. It was in fact transported to Pratolino, where an eagle was placed alongside it, which is still there today, and intended for use as a fountain, as Sgrilli records it in 1742 . Heikamp without documenting the source, reports that in the winter of 1552, Bandinelli complained that he did not have the marble available for the final version of 'God the Father' now in the cloister of S. Croce, "discovered on October 21, 1556" . Despite the nineteenth-century rearrangements pointed out by Inghirami, the present sculpture retains recognizable Bandinellian features. The statue was believed to be an ancient Greek work by Inghirami himself, an opinion shared by later critics until the beginning of our century, as Gurrieri/Chatfield recalled without, however, pointing out Heikamp's fundamental contribution to the issue. Similar fates were suffered by the first version of the Adam and Eve for the same choir, both later placed in Boboli. Dezzi Bardeschi recently published a Uffizi drawing with a design by Pasquale Poccianti for the placement of the statue in Boboli