The Labors of Hercules and Other Works by Vincenzo de'Rossi

* I owe the opportunity of writing this article to a scholarship granted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for research on Italian 16th-century sculpture; I wish to express my thanks for the occasion to stay and work in Florence.

Abstract

Vincenzo de' Rossi, born in 1527 and active until 1587, with an ample oeuvre in Florence and Rome, is one of those Florentine sculptors whose fame has suffered until now because for centuries his work went under the name of Michelangelo. According to the illuminating conception of the Florentine sixteenth century recently put forward by Keutner, this was not at all the century of Michelangelo, but an epoch of personal styles found in highly individual works of art, which were created in competition. We can have little to say about such sculpture if we continue to concern ourselves with stylistic development exclusively in terms of the major artistic personalities of that century; instead we ought to re-examine single works in order to become aware of what the artists living in the second half of the cinquecento achieved, and then we will be able to improve our judgment. Rossi's sculpture is but one example among others. Giorgio Vasari, Raffaello Borghini and Filippo Baldinucci left Vite of Rossi, a successful pupil of Baccio Bandinelli, with detailed descriptions of his work.¹ By referring to these records, it has been possible to make a step-by-step re-examination of his oeuvre.