Niccolò Tribolo
Encyclopedia
Niccolò di Raffaello di Niccolò dei Pericoli, called "Il Tribolo" (1500–7 September 1550) was an Italian
Mannerist artist
in the service of Cosimo I de' Medici in his natal city of Florence
.
Niccolò di Raffaello began as an apprentice to a woodcarver but, while still in his teens, was taken up as an assistant by Andrea Sansovino
. Giorgio Vasari
, in his Vite, mentioned numerous early figures and fountains by Tribolo that can no longer be traced.
A court artist like his successor Bernardo Buontalenti
, he was expected to function well as a member of a team; like Buontalenti's, his name has been overshadowed by greater personalities. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, connoisseurs attributed to Michelangelo
some of Tribolo's drawings for sculptural niche
s and wall fountains, a tribute to Tribolo's bravura as a draughtsman and a sign of Michelangelo's influence on his style.
From 1517 he had returned from Venice
to Florence, working on his own. In his autobiography, Benvenuto Cellini
tells of his trip to Venice with "Tribolino" for whose son he had stood godfather. In Bologna
, where they saw some Florentine exiles at an inn, the cautious Tribolo, "the most timorous man that I have ever known, kept on saying: 'Do not look at them or talk to them, if you care to go back to Florence'" In Venice, after several days' journey, it soon appeared that Jacopo Sansovino
had no present work for Niccolò, but invited him to drop in again, at his convenience.
Vasari tells of the painter Giuliano Bugiardini
who had been at a loss to draw a file of figures and "foreshorten them so that they should appear all in a row, or how he could find room for them in so narrow a place. Buonarroti, feeling compassion for the poor man, took up a piece of charcoal and sketched a file of naked figures with all the judgment and excellence proper to him, and went away with many thanks from Giuliano. Not long after, the latter brought Il Tribolo his friend to see what Buonarroti had done, and told him all about it; but because Buonarroti had only sketched them in outline, without any shadow, Bugiardini could not carry them out; so Il Tribolo resolved to help him, and he made some rough models in clay, giving them all that rough force which Michelangelo had put into the drawing; and so he brought them to Giuliano. But this manner did not please Bugiardini's smooth fancy, and as soon as Il Tribolo was gone he took a brush and, dipping it in water, smoothed them all down. Il Tribolo, hearing about it from Giuliano himself, laughed at his honest simplicity, and the work was at last finished, so that none would have known that Michael Angelo had ever looked at it."
Soon Tribolo was fully employed by Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici
. Many of the lavish productions of 16th-century court artists were ephemeral, like the tableaux and triumphal arches Tribolo created for Charles V
's grand entrance into Florence in 1536. Diplomatic errands were also required: on Cosimo's orders, Tribolo went to Rome to induce Michelangelo
to return to Florence and take up his uncompleted stairs in the vestibule of the Laurentian Library
. In more lasting projects, Tribolo contributed the architectural framework of the rich funeral chapel of Cosimo's consort Eleonora di Toledo
, rebuilt the old Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano
, where he apparently designed the new stables, and in the last year of his life laid out the first axial development of the Boboli Gardens
behind Palazzo Pitti
, where he oversaw construction of the amphitheatre before his premature death in 1550. In his gardens there and at the Medici villas
La Petraia
and Villa Castello, Tribolo is often credited with fathering the Italian garden—insofar as the phenomenon could have a single father.
, where he had spent his youth, the Villa Castello
at Rifredi near Florence, Grand Duke Cosimo entrusted Tribolo from 1536 with the layout of a garden that was to illustrate, with an elaborate iconological program worked out by one of Cosimo's court humanists
, the beneficent influence of the recently-ennobled Medici, seen to be watering Tuscany, as a source of water fertilizes a garden. With the aid of hydraulic engineer Piero da San Casciano, Tribolo engineered a sequence of terraces with fountains that began at the upper end in the "wild" garden—where the civilizing Medici touch had not yet been felt— with a sculpture of The Apennines (by Ammanati
); once in the formal terraces
the tamed water passed in linear canals to two sculptural fountains placed along the central axis. The marble bases of both were sculpted by Il Tribolo and his assistant Pierino da Vinci
, 1538 –1548, but the bronze figures that formerly crowned them have been moved to Villa La Petraia: Hercules and Antaeus
by Ammanati, and Florentia (Florence) as a classical Venus anadyomene ("Venus wringing out her hair") by Giambologna
. The fountains were the earliest fully sculptural fountain complexes set at the center of garden spaces, and they set the example for the seamless development of fountains as major settings for figure sculpture, in a sequence that extended unbroken into the early 20th century. Against a retaining wall at Villa Castello, Tribolo positioned a grotto
on the central axis: it was completed under the direction of Giorgio Vasari
with bronze birds from whose beaks water once spurted, sculpted by Giambologna and Ammanati (now in the Bargello
). In 1581 Montaigne
was so impressed with the copious giochi d'aqua
at Castello that he included a description of the gardens in his travel journal.
A symposium on the occasion of Tribolo's cinquecentennial in 2000 was held at Poggio a Caiano
, with contributions by several art historians .
The Bizzaria
of Florence
was rediscovered at the Villa Castello.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
Mannerist artist
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
in the service of Cosimo I de' Medici in his natal city of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
.
Life
Andrea Sansovino
Andrea dal Monte Sansovino or Andrea Contucci del Monte San Savino was an Italian sculptor active during the High Renaissance...
. Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
, in his Vite, mentioned numerous early figures and fountains by Tribolo that can no longer be traced.
A court artist like his successor Bernardo Buontalenti
Bernardo Buontalenti
Bernardo Buontalenti, byname of Bernardo Delle Girandole was an Italian stage designer, architect, theatrical designer, military engineer and artist.-Biography:Buontalenti was born in Florence....
, he was expected to function well as a member of a team; like Buontalenti's, his name has been overshadowed by greater personalities. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, connoisseurs attributed to Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
some of Tribolo's drawings for sculptural niche
Niche (architecture)
A niche in classical architecture is an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. Nero's Domus Aurea was the first semi-private dwelling that possessed rooms that were given richly varied floor plans, shaped with niches and exedras;...
s and wall fountains, a tribute to Tribolo's bravura as a draughtsman and a sign of Michelangelo's influence on his style.
From 1517 he had returned from Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
to Florence, working on his own. In his autobiography, Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.-Youth:...
tells of his trip to Venice with "Tribolino" for whose son he had stood godfather. In Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, where they saw some Florentine exiles at an inn, the cautious Tribolo, "the most timorous man that I have ever known, kept on saying: 'Do not look at them or talk to them, if you care to go back to Florence'" In Venice, after several days' journey, it soon appeared that Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was an Italian sculptor and architect, known best for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity...
had no present work for Niccolò, but invited him to drop in again, at his convenience.
Vasari tells of the painter Giuliano Bugiardini
Giuliano Bugiardini
Giuliano Bugiardini was an Italian painter of the late-Renaissance period known as Mannerism, active mainly in Florence....
who had been at a loss to draw a file of figures and "foreshorten them so that they should appear all in a row, or how he could find room for them in so narrow a place. Buonarroti, feeling compassion for the poor man, took up a piece of charcoal and sketched a file of naked figures with all the judgment and excellence proper to him, and went away with many thanks from Giuliano. Not long after, the latter brought Il Tribolo his friend to see what Buonarroti had done, and told him all about it; but because Buonarroti had only sketched them in outline, without any shadow, Bugiardini could not carry them out; so Il Tribolo resolved to help him, and he made some rough models in clay, giving them all that rough force which Michelangelo had put into the drawing; and so he brought them to Giuliano. But this manner did not please Bugiardini's smooth fancy, and as soon as Il Tribolo was gone he took a brush and, dipping it in water, smoothed them all down. Il Tribolo, hearing about it from Giuliano himself, laughed at his honest simplicity, and the work was at last finished, so that none would have known that Michael Angelo had ever looked at it."
Soon Tribolo was fully employed by Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici
Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Cosimo I de' Medici was Duke of Florence from 1537 to 1574, reigning as the first Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569.-Biography:...
. Many of the lavish productions of 16th-century court artists were ephemeral, like the tableaux and triumphal arches Tribolo created for Charles V
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...
's grand entrance into Florence in 1536. Diplomatic errands were also required: on Cosimo's orders, Tribolo went to Rome to induce Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
to return to Florence and take up his uncompleted stairs in the vestibule of the Laurentian Library
Laurentian Library
The Laurentian Library is a historical library in Florence, Italy, containing a repository of more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books...
. In more lasting projects, Tribolo contributed the architectural framework of the rich funeral chapel of Cosimo's consort Eleonora di Toledo
Eleonora di Toledo
Eleanor of Toledo Eleanor of Toledo Eleanor of Toledo (Italian: Eleonora di Toledo (1522 – 17 December 1562), born Doña Leonor Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio, was a Spanish noblewoman who was Duchess of Florence from 1539. She is credited with being the first modern first lady, or consort...
, rebuilt the old Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano is a town and comune in the Province of Prato, Tuscany region Italy. The town lies 9 km south of the provincial capital of Prato.-The Medici villa:...
, where he apparently designed the new stables, and in the last year of his life laid out the first axial development of the Boboli Gardens
Boboli Gardens
The Boboli Gardens are a park in Florence, Italy, that is home to a collection of sculptures dating from the 16th through the 18th centuries, with some Roman antiquities.-History and layout:...
behind Palazzo Pitti
Palazzo Pitti
The Palazzo Pitti , in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast mainly Renaissance palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio...
, where he oversaw construction of the amphitheatre before his premature death in 1550. In his gardens there and at the Medici villas
Medici villas
The Medici villas are a series of rural building complexes near Florence which were owned by members of the Medici family between the 15th century and the 17th century. The villas served several functions: they were the country palaces of the Medici, scattered over the territory that they ruled,...
La Petraia
Villa La Petraia
The Villa La Petraia is one of the Medici villas in Castello, near Florence, Tuscany, central Italy.It has a distinctive 19th century Belvedere on the upper east terrace on axis with the view of Florence- External links :...
and Villa Castello, Tribolo is often credited with fathering the Italian garden—insofar as the phenomenon could have a single father.
Villa Castello
At his mother's villaVilla
A villa was originally an ancient Roman upper-class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity,...
, where he had spent his youth, the Villa Castello
Villa di Castello
The Villa di Castello is one of the Medici villas near Florence, Tuscany, central Italy. Its ideal design appears in a lunette painted by Giusto Utens in 1599. The property was purchased by Lorenzo de'Medici in 1477 on the site of an existing building which he had rebuilt...
at Rifredi near Florence, Grand Duke Cosimo entrusted Tribolo from 1536 with the layout of a garden that was to illustrate, with an elaborate iconological program worked out by one of Cosimo's court humanists
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
, the beneficent influence of the recently-ennobled Medici, seen to be watering Tuscany, as a source of water fertilizes a garden. With the aid of hydraulic engineer Piero da San Casciano, Tribolo engineered a sequence of terraces with fountains that began at the upper end in the "wild" garden—where the civilizing Medici touch had not yet been felt— with a sculpture of The Apennines (by Ammanati
Bartolomeo Ammanati
Bartolomeo Ammannati was an Italian architect and sculptor, born at Settignano, near Florence. He studied under Baccio Bandinelli and Jacopo Sansovino and closely imitated the style of Michelangelo.He was more distinguished in architecture than in sculpture...
); once in the formal terraces
Terrace (gardening)
In gardening, a terrace is an element where a raised flat paved or gravelled section overlooks a prospect. A raised terrace keeps a house dry and provides a transition between the hard materials of the architecture and softer ones of the garden.-History:...
the tamed water passed in linear canals to two sculptural fountains placed along the central axis. The marble bases of both were sculpted by Il Tribolo and his assistant Pierino da Vinci
Pierino da Vinci
Pierino da Vinci , born Pier Francesco di Bartolomeo di Ser Piero da Vinci, was an Italian sculptor, born in the small town of Vinci, Italy; he was the nephew of Leonardo da Vinci....
, 1538 –1548, but the bronze figures that formerly crowned them have been moved to Villa La Petraia: Hercules and Antaeus
Antaeus
Antaeus in Greek and Berber mythology was a half-giant, the son of Poseidon and Gaia, whose wife was Tinjis. Antaeus had a daughter named Alceis or Barce.-Mythology:...
by Ammanati, and Florentia (Florence) as a classical Venus anadyomene ("Venus wringing out her hair") by Giambologna
Giambologna
Giambologna, born as Jean Boulogne, incorrectly known as Giovanni da Bologna and Giovanni Bologna , was a sculptor, known for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist style.- Biography :...
. The fountains were the earliest fully sculptural fountain complexes set at the center of garden spaces, and they set the example for the seamless development of fountains as major settings for figure sculpture, in a sequence that extended unbroken into the early 20th century. Against a retaining wall at Villa Castello, Tribolo positioned a grotto
Grotto
A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...
on the central axis: it was completed under the direction of Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
with bronze birds from whose beaks water once spurted, sculpted by Giambologna and Ammanati (now in the Bargello
Bargello
The Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace or Palazzo del Popolo is a former barracks and prison, now an art museum, in Florence, Italy.-Terminology:...
). In 1581 Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
was so impressed with the copious giochi d'aqua
Jeux d'eau
Jeux d'eau or "water games", is an umbrella term in the history of gardens for the "water features" that were introduced into mid-16th century Mannerist Italian gardens...
at Castello that he included a description of the gardens in his travel journal.
Minor works
- Ganymede riding the Eagle, bronze, BargelloBargelloThe Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace or Palazzo del Popolo is a former barracks and prison, now an art museum, in Florence, Italy.-Terminology:...
, Florence. - Doorway reliefs, (1525–27) Basilica di San Petronio, Bologna
- Reliefs, Santa Casa in the Cathedral of LoretoLoreto (AN)Loreto is a hilltown and comune of the Italian province of Ancona, in the Marche. It is mostly famous as the seat of the Basilica della Santa Casa, a popular Catholic pilgrimage site.-Location:...
, (1530–33), a project that had been begun under the direction of Sansovino in 1513.
A symposium on the occasion of Tribolo's cinquecentennial in 2000 was held at Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano is a town and comune in the Province of Prato, Tuscany region Italy. The town lies 9 km south of the provincial capital of Prato.-The Medici villa:...
, with contributions by several art historians .
The Bizzaria
Bizzaria
The Bizzaria of Florence, which is probably the first plant chimera obtained, is a graft between the florentine citron and sour orange. It produces branches of regular Florentine Citron including such leaves, and from the other side branches of sour orange. The most interesting part of it is the...
of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
was rediscovered at the Villa Castello.