BANDINELLI, BACCIO

born Nov. 12, 1493?, Florence died Feb. 7, 1560, Florence Florentine Mannerist sculptor whose Michelangelo-influenced works were favoured by the Medici in the second quarter of the 16th century. Bandinelli was trained as a goldsmith by his father, Michele di Viviano de' Brandini, who was patronized by the Medici family. Showing marked predilection for sculpture, he worked under the sculptor Giovanni Francesco Rustici and became one of the principal artists at the court of Cosimo I de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. He founded an academy for artists in the Vatican (1531) and one in Florence (c. 1550). Accounts of Bandinelli given in Giorgio Vasari's Lives and in the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini represent him as jealous, malignant, and untalented. He assumed the surname Bandinelli in 1530. Bandinelli's surviving works prove him to have been a more distinguished sculptor than his contemporaries allowed. His copy of the Laocon (Uffizi, Florence), his statue of Hercules and Cacus (1534; Piazza della Signoria), and his reliefs on the choir screen of Florence Cathedral explain the vogue that his austere, rather arid work enjoyed at the Medici court. In later life he was supplanted in favour by the sculptors Benvenuto Cellini and Bartolommeo Ammannati. Shortly before his death Bandinelli and his son Clemente sculpted his own tomb (1554; Santissima Annunziata, Florence), noted for its group of Lamentation over the Dead Christ.