Portrait of an Elderly Man at The Louvre, Paris by Scan The World

Description

The bronze head was adapted on a stone chest to represent the sculptor Giambologna (1529 - 1608) in Cardinal Richelieu's gallery of portraits of artists. The model, unidentified, wears a long beard which was of fashion in Venice around 1600. Giambologna (1529 – 13 August 1608) was a Flemish sculptor, celebrated for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist style. Giambologna (1529-1608) was born inDouai, Flanders (now in France). After youthful studies in Antwerp with the architect-sculptor Jacques du Broeucq, he moved to Italy in 1550, and studied in Rome. Giambologna made detailed study of the sculpture of classical antiquity. He was also much influenced by Michel angelo, but developed his own Mannerist style, with perhaps less emphasis on emotion and more emphasis on refined surfaces, cool elegance and beauty. Pope Pius IV gave Giambologna his first major commission, the colossal bronze Neptune and subsidiary figures for the Fountain of Neptune (the base designed by Tommaso Laureti, 1566) in Bologna. Giambologna spent his most productive years in Florence, where he had settled in 1553. Ten years later, he was named a member (Accademico) of the prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, just founded by the Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, on 13 January 1563, under the influence of the painter-architect Giorgio Vasari, becoming also one of the Medici's most important court sculptors. He died in Florence at the age of 79 - the Medici had never allowed him…