After Giambologna

After GIAMBOLOGNA (Douai, France, 1529 - Florence, 1608).
"The abduction of the Sabines".
Patinated bronze.
Measurements: 108 x 41 x 33 cm.

This work reproduces the sculpture made by John of Bologna between 1581 and 1582, and currently preserved in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria, in Florence, in fact its original location, where it was placed in comparison with the "Perseus with the head of Medusa" by Benvenuto Cellini. It is a work of serpentine tension and mannerist elongation, following the theoretical recommendations of Lomazzo, which advances the helicoidal, closed, ascending movement of Bernini's works already in the Baroque period. The work was not the product of a commission, but the fruit of its author's will to show what he was capable of doing. The result was a sculpture of such virtuosity that it thrilled Francis I of Medici when he saw it, who ordered it to be installed in the Loggia dei Lanzi, near the Palazzo Vecchio. The work had no title, and in fact John of Bologna decided on the theme of the abduction of the Sabine women when he saw, in front of his work, Cellini's "Perseus", which represented the triumph of good over evil and the victory of the Medici in Florence after they had been expelled from the city in 1494.
It is a monumental sculptural ensemble 410 cm high, made in a single block of white marble and composed of three nude figures, united through their gazes and, formally, through the linked position of their bodies, which give the sensation of revolving around a central axis from which they cannot escape. On the pedestal there is a bronze relief with scenes of the abduction of the junipers.