03 — ARTWORK
Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus
- MEDIUM
- Bronze and marble
- TYPE
- Other
PALETTE
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- FILE
- 1778 × 1190 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
Tribolo, a sculptor and engineer, designed the terraced garden, and the fountains of the lower level for the Medici Villaa residence in the country (in Italy); villas acquired palace-like characteristics from the Renaissance onwards. di Castello"castle", palace. in Rifredi, near Florence. The Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus, executed by various sculptors after 1536, is the earliest of fully-developed Renaissance fountain complex. From that time onwards the decoration of fountains provided one of the major outlets for sculpture.
So well organized was Tribolo's workshop that his Fountain of Hercules at Castello, now judged to be his masterpieceA term now loosely applied to the finest work by a particular artist or to any work of art of acknowledged greatness or of preeminence in its field. Originally it meant the piece of work by which a craftsman, having finished his training, gained the rank of'master' in his guild., was executed largely by assistants from his models, much of it posthumously. Larger, more richly decorated and with a more copious flow of water than the Fountain of the Labyrinth, it consists of an octagonal marbleloosely applied to any hard limestone that can be sawn into thin slabs and will take a good polish so that it is suitable for decorative work; more strictly, it refers to metamorphosed limestones whose structure has been recrystallized by heat or pressure. Marbles are widely disseminated and occur in a great variety of colours and patterns, but certain types have been particularly prized by sculptors. The most famous of Greek white marbles in the ancient world was the close-grained Pentelic, which was quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica. The Elgin Marbles are carved in Pentelic. Widely used also were the somewhat coarser-grained translucent white marbles from the Aegean islands of Paros and Naxos. Parian marble was used for the celebrated Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The pure white Carrara marble, quarried at Massa, Carrara, and Pietra Santa in Tuscany from the 3rd century BC, is the most famous of all sculptors' stones. It was used for the Apollo Belvedere, and was much favoured in the Renaissance, particularly by Michelangelo, who often visited the quarries to select material for his work. Neoclassical sculptors also favoured Carrara marble because of its ability to take a smooth, sleek surface, but it can look rather 'dead' compared with some of the finest Greek marbles. basin and two tazze decorated with marble and bronzeAn alloy of copper (usually about 90 per cent) and tin, often also containing small amounts of other metals such as lead or zinc. Since antiquity it has been the metal most commonly used in cast sculpture because of its strength, durability, and the fact that it is easily workable - both hot and cold - by a variety of processes. It is easier to cast than copper because it has a lower melting-point, and its great tensile strength makes possible the protrusion of unsupported parts - an advantage over marble sculpture. The colour of bronze is affected by the proportion of tin or other metals present, varying from silverish to a rich, coppery red, and its surface beauty can be enhanced when it acquires a patina. putti, masks and claws. The whole is topped by a heroic bronze group of Hercules and Antaeus, which contrasts in typical fashion with the animated denizens of Tribolo's fairyland below.
The monumental bronzes for Castello were cast in a somewhat perfunctory fashion in the 1560s: the Hercules and Antaeus and a colossal Appennine by Bartolomeo Ammanati's assistants and the small statue of Florence by Giambologna's. They nevertheless retain important vestiges of Tribolo's models.
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rb2cd17789b92af,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus by TRIBOLO, Niccolò},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-13},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/tribolo-niccol-r36caddc5632ed0/fountain-of-hercules-and-antaeus-rb2cd17789b92af},
urldate = {2026-09-13},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-13. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
