‘Scultori Fiamminghi’: how Flemish sculptors conquered Italian city squares

In the 16th century, artists from the Low Countries flocked across the Alps to Italy. There, they went looking for what they had only heard about at home: the art of classical antiquity, the innovative ideas of the Renaissance and, ideally, wealthy patrons who dared to dream big.

Among these pioneers were the scultori fiamminghi: Flemish sculptors who would go on to build impressive careers in Italy. Their monumental sculptures still adorn the squares, palaces and gardens of cities such as Florence and Bologna. Where tourists eat ice cream and pigeons reign supreme, you can still see traces of the scultori fiamminghi four centuries later.

A masterpiece in Piazza della Signoria

Anyone walking across the Piazza della Signoria in Florence would find it hard to miss. Beneath the arches of the Loggia dei Lanzi stands the ‘Abduction of a Sabine Woman’, one of the jewels of the Renaissance. The sculpture, which stands over four metres tall even without its plinth, is a technical tour de force. The Flemish sculptor Giambologna carved the three figures from a single block of marble, a feat that people considered virtually impossible in the 16th century. The composition follows the principle of a figura serpentinata: a spiral form that invites the viewer to walk around the sculpture and view it from different angles.

When the sculpture was unveiled in 1583, the Florentines were exceptionally enthusiastic. That was by no means a foregone conclusion. Florence loved art, but could be ruthless towards artists. In 1534, people derided Baccio Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules and Cacus’ as a ‘sack full of melons’. Not even the greatest masters could escape the judgement of the street.

To the Florentines, of course, sculptures were more than mere decoration; they embodied a city, a ruler or an ideal. Michelangelo’s ‘David’ was the most famous example. After the celebrated statue proved too heavy for the cathedral for which it was created, a committee, including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, gave it a prominent place in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, in the political heart of the republic. There, ‘David’ became a symbol of the strength and independence of the Florentine Republic. But a political symbol quickly becomes a target. In the very year it was unveiled, ‘David’ was pelted with stones, and during an uprising against the Medici in 1527, rioters broke its left arm into three pieces. It is all the more impressive, then, that a Flemish sculptor managed to win over the critical, fickle Florentines.

Giambologna, ‘The Abduction of a Sabine Maiden’, 1583, Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza della Signoria, Florence, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

Copy of Michelangelo’s ‘David’, 1910, Piazza della Signoria, Florence, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

Jean de Boulogne becomes Giambologna

Before Giambologna became Giambologna, he was Jean de Boulogne, a young sculptor from Douai, a city in what was then still the County of Flanders. He learnt his craft in the Low Countries, but never returned after a study trip to Italy. The nobleman Bernardo Vecchietti immediately noticed him and took the young artist under his wing and into his home. He secured the Flemish artist’s first major commissions and introduced him to the Medici court.

‘The Abduction of a Sabine Woman’ made Giambologna famous overnight. Remarkably, he was not commissioned to create the sculpture and did not originally even have a subject or title in mind. It was only when the sculpture was nearly complete that someone suggested it might depict the abduction of the Sabine women. Giambologna created the work out of pure ambition: as a quest for the perfect composition and a demonstration of his exceptional skill. Art lovers from all over Europe flocked to Florence to see the masterpiece with their own eyes, and young sculptors queued up to become Giambologna’s apprentices. And so, the Flemish artist gradually became a Florentine.

Art on a colossal scale

Yet ‘The Abduction of a Sabine Woman’ was not the only prestigious project to come from Giambologna’s hand. In 1578, he designed the Palazzo Vecchietti for his patron. Today, the building serves as a luxury hotel, but still bears the signature of its creator. On one corner of the palace stands a striking bronze satyr that seems to be watching passers-by. According to a Florentine legend, the devil once raced through the streets in the guise of a black horse during a sermon by Peter of Verona. Giambologna gave the story a bronze face.

Even more spectacular was his work for the Villa di Pratolino of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici. There, he designed the ‘Colossus of the Apennines’: a 12-metre-tall giant rising from an artificial mountain. Art historians often interpret the colossus as a personification of the Apennines, although they also see references to the god Jupiter or the myth of Atlas, the Titan who carries the heavens on his shoulders.

The giant formed part of a garden in which art and technology were in constant interplay. Fountains, grottoes and hidden hydraulic systems surprised visitors at unexpected moments with jets of water. Inside the statue was a labyrinth of rooms spread over three storeys. According to contemporaries, Francesco I de’ Medici would sometimes sit in the chamber inside the colossus’s head and fish, lowering his rod through one of its eyes. In the evening, when torches illuminated the chambers, the giant’s eyes seemed to glow softly.

Giambologna, Palazzo Vecchietti, 1578 Via degli Strozzi, 4, Florence, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

Giambologna, Palazzo Vecchietti, 1578 Via degli Strozzi, 4, Firenze — Giambologna, Palazzo Vecchietti, 1578 Via degli Strozzi, 4, Florence, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

Giambologna, ‘Colossus of the Apennines’, c. 1580, Parco Mediceo di Pratolino, Vaglia, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

Giambologna, ‘Colossus of the Apennines’, c. 1580, Parco Mediceo di Pratolino, Vaglia, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

Yet not every project simply landed in Giambologna’s lap. In 1559, Cosimo I de’ Medici organised a competition for a new Neptune fountain in Florence. Giambologna put himself forward for the commission, but Bartolomeo Ammannati ultimately won. He enlisted several artists to assist him, including Giambologna, who was responsible for the bronze satyrs at the fountain’s corners.

When the monument was unveiled in 1574, sniggers could be heard in the Piazza della Signoria. ‘Ammannato, Ammannato, quanto marmo hai sciupato!’ the Florentines jeered. Loosely translated: ‘Ammannati, Ammannati, how much marble have you wasted!’

Giambologna did not have to wait long for another opportunity. A few years later, he was commissioned to design a Neptune fountain for Bologna. The city took the project so seriously that an entire block of houses was demolished to make way for it. And Neptune still stands there today, in the square that bears his name, the Piazza del Nettuno. Pigeons perch on his shoulders, tourists photograph the sea god’s bronze abdominal muscles and the people of Bologna still simply arrange to meet ‘at the fountain’. And perhaps that is the greatest achievement of a sculptor like Giambologna: his work is both monumental and a natural part of city life.

Bartolomeo Ammannati, ‘Fountain of Neptune’, 1560–1574, Piazza della Signoria, Florence, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

Copy of Giambologna’s ‘Fountain of Oceanus’, Uffizi Gallery – Boboli Gardens, Florence, photo: Gilles Van Damme – Eyes—Screen for M Leuven

A forgotten chapter

Giambologna was the most famous, but by no means the only Flemish sculptor to cause a sensation in Italy. The scultori fiamminghi combined the technical precision of the Low Countries with the imagination and artistic ambition of the Italian Renaissance. With the exhibition ‘Scultori Fiamminghi’, M Leuven is once again placing these often-forgotten artists at the heart of the Renaissance narrative.