Villain with barrel

Description

In Bandinelli's life, Vasari recalls that baccio "had made Gio. Fancelli, his creation, conduct by hand...with the modelio made by himself, for a nursery, a villan voting a barrel full of water." The description does in fact correspond to this figure, which nevertheless stylistically seems more advanced and closer to the manner of Valerio Cioli , an artist to whom it is in fact referred by eighteenth-century sources, which interpret the figure, "in the act" of pouring a barrel arroves... "in time of racking," and associating it with the villan who spades certainly by the hand of Cioli. Wiles first traced this statue back to Vasari's text, and then to Fancelli, noting the precocity" of the theme compared to the gender subjects popularized by Giambologna . Heikamp also recently recalled the precocity of Bandinelli's interest in everyday subjects and animals, of which a group of Drawings is preserved in the Louvre, recognizing in this Hellenistic derivations and Nordic influences. The topic was also the subject of Anthea Brook's recent communication at the recent conference 'Boboli 90'