Bandini drawing

GIOVANNI DE BENEDETTO BANDINI called GIOVANNI DELL’OPERA 

Castello da Benedetto Bandini 1540 – 1599 Florence

A Seated Male Saint.

Drawing in brown pen and ink over black chalk. Inscribed in pen and brown ink in the lower right margin ‘bandini’. Watermark: Shield. Provenance: Folio Fine Art, London (as Passarotti), circa 1970s; private collection, New York.

Roger Ward has enthusiastically confirmed the attribution in a note to the former owner.

See also, R. Ward, Baccio Bandinelli, 1493-1560, Drawings from British Collections, exhibition catalogue, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1988, under no. 45 where Ward discussed the group of 11 apostles. Anne Forlani Tempesti, ‘Disegni di Apostoli’ di Giovanni Bandini, Prospettiva, April 1989-October 1990, volume 57-60, p. 68.

Engraved by Jan de Bisschop, in Paradigmata Graphices, The Hague, 1671, pl. 35.

Our drawing is a preparation for the marble reliefs that decorate the choir of the Duomo in Florence. Baccio Bandinelli had begun this project in 1547 and continued the work until his death in 1560. Bandini began working with Bandinelli around 1555, and when the older master died was asked to complete the work and carved the majority of the figures on the western side of the choir screen which he finished by 1572, as well as a portrait bust of Cosimo I de’Medici which can still be seen over the doorway of the Opera dell’Duomo.

Bandini’s portrait sculpture brought him very considerable fame in the decade of the 1570s, and at this time he also worked in bronze. His Juno in the Palazzo Vecchio constitutes the artist’s efforts to emphasize the Medici family’s political importance. Soon afterward, however, Bandini began work for the delle Rovere family in Urbino. There and for the rest of his life he used the energy of antique sculpture and Michelangelo as his chief sources of inspiration.

His drawing style, especially in our relatively early sheet, is cool and precise, with elegant outlines that give almost crystalline sharpness to the figures.

335 x 213 mm    12 ¾ x 8 3/8 inches