The Apennine Colossus of Giambologna Painting

by Paul Meijering

Original - Not For Sale

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

90.000 x 120.000 x 1.000 cm.

Title

The Apennine Colossus of Giambologna Painting

Artist

Paul Meijering

Medium

Painting - Acrylic Painting On Panel

Description

Realistic acrylic painting by the Dutch fine artist Paul Meijering of The Appennine Colossus with his creator, the sculptor Giambologno.

Giambologna (1529 – 13 August 1608), also known as Jean de Boulogne (French), Jehan Boulongne (Flemish) and Giovanni da Bologna (Italian), was the last significant Italian Renaissance sculptor, with a large workshop producing large and small works in bronze and marble in a late Mannerist style.

Giambologna was born in Douai, Flanders (then and now in France), in 1529. After youthful studies in Antwerp with the architect-sculptor Jacques du Broeucq, he moved to Italy in 1550 and studied in Rome, making a detailed study of the sculpture of classical antiquity. He was also much influenced by Michelangelo, 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. In 1563 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 Medicis' most important court sculptors. He died in Florence at the age of 79; the Medici had never allowed him to leave Florence, as they rightly feared that either the Austrian or Spanish Habsburgs would entice him into permanent employment. He was interred in a chapel he designed himself in the Santissima Annunziata.

The Apennine Colossus (Italian: Colosso Appenninico) is a stone statue, approximately 30 m high, in the estate of the Villa Demidoff in Vaglia, Tuscany in Italy. Giambologna (Flemish sculptor Jean de Boulogne) created the colossal figure, a personification of the Apennine mountains, in the late 1580s. It was constructed on the grounds of the Villa di Pratolino, a Renaissance villa that fell into disrepair and was replaced by the Villa Demidoff in the 1800s.

The colossus is about 30 metres (98 ft) high and is meant as a personification of the Apennine Mountains. It was the water source for the Pratolino, its fountains and secret water plays. The colossus has the appearance of an elderly man crouched at the shore of a lake
It is presumed that Giambologna was inspired by the description of a mountain-like Atlas in Ovid's Metamorphoses, when he designed the figure of Apennine.
The stone colossus is depicted naked, with stalactites in the thick beard and long hair to show the metamorphosis of man and mountain, blending his body with the surrounding nature, populated by aquatic vegetation. The statue is described to originally have been emerging from its environment like being alive. The giant was able to sweat and weep over a network of water pipes. In the winter season, icicles would cover his body. The work was made of stone and plaster and appearing to be partially covered with moss and lichens.

Within the giant exist a series of chambers and caves on three levels. In the ground floor of the colossus exists a cave containing an octagonal fountain dedicated to the Greek goddess Thetys.
In the giant's upper floor is a chamber big enough for a small orchestra and in the head a small chamber holds a fireplace out of which the smoke would escape through his nostrils. The chamber in the head had slits in the ears and the eyes. Francesco enjoyed fishing while sitting in the head chamber, throwing the fishing line through one of the eye slits. At night the chamber was illuminated with torches, following which the eyes appeared to glow in the dark.

Uploaded

February 3rd, 2023

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