Europe's greatest late-16th century sculptor Giambologna will be celebrated by his adopted city Florence in a show starting here next month.
The show at Florence's Bargello museum is the biggest ever on Giambologna and brings together works - in bronze, silver and marble - from all over the world.
Giambologna (1524 1608) was a Flemish sculptor whose real name was Jean Bologne or Boulogne.
Although he was born in Douai, France, he trained in Flanders before coming to Florence and staying there as Medici court sculptor, heavily influenced by Michelangelo.
Highlights of the show will include the Bargello's own Mercury, regarded as the Flemish master's finest statuette, and the original bronze version of his Rape of the Sabines, a symphony of dramatic poses in the style he practically invented, Mannerism.
The lifesize final marble version of the Rape is one of Florence's most admired public statues, standing alongside Cellini's Perseus in a loggia in Piazza della Signoria. The exhibition also offers a series of marvelous
fountain decorations for his patrons, Florence's Medici dynasty, including a delightful carousel of frolicking
Venuses.
There is also a string of dainty Venus statuettes the Medicis gave to other European potentates. Many of these have come from abroad - one from Vienna's Imperial Cabinet and another Dresden's Kunkstkammer.
Another masterly rendition of the love goddess, the so-called Cesarini Venus, has come from closer to home, the US Embassy in Rome.
It is the first time the embassy has loaned the piece.
Other famous bronze works on show are Mars and The Labours of Hercules, in several different versions - some signed by the master. A separate section of the show is devoted to busts commissioned by Francesco I of the Medici, shown in their various stages including extremely rare terracotta starting-points.
The immediacy and vitality of the earliest conceptions are apparent in clay studies from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
One of the busts inspired English poet Robert Browning's poem The Statue And The Bust.
Another section celebrates the great equestrian statues of Cosimo I and Ferdinando I, and yet another shows the sculptor's genius at garden design and his immense talent at forging unforgettable fountains - many of them for the Boboli Gardens in Florence.
Some of these are decorated by flying dragons - one of them ridden by the Medici jester Morgante - and others by cheekily posed bronze birds. A huge fountain featuring the titan Apennine lifting the Earth's crust, at a Medici villa near Florence, is shown in a clay study.
There is also the monumental Ocean statue from the Boboli Gardens.
Other famous Giambologna works, two of the few not on show here, are the bronze doors of the cathedral in Pisa and a Neptune fountain in Bologna.
The show runs from March 2 to June 15 before a smaller version moves to the Kunthistorisches Museum in
Vienna.
