Head of Alexander the Great

White Marble

Italy-Firenze

c 1550

Art Loss Reference: S00238004

H 57 x W 42 x D 10 cm 

H 22 1/2 x W 16 1/2 x D 4 inch

This very fine oval relief represents an attractive youth wearing an all'antica cuirass and elaborate helmet. This is beautifully decorated, with depictions of three different creatures:

on the front is a fantastical bird, with a pointy beak and leonine eyes, in the middle is the head of a ram, and a grotesque mask decorates at the back. The marble is subtly carved, with keen attention to detail. Skilled chiselling beautifully renders the rigidity of the armour, the softness of the curls that fall over the figure's shoulders, and the exquisite features of his face.

The subject of this unpublished marble relief may be identified through comparison with ancient coinage as Alexander the Great (356-323 BC). An exemplary historical figure since the time of his empire, Alexander was a genial commander, one of the most successful generals of all times, and a highly erudite man. His image thus functioned as a reminder of his illustrious deeds, exemplary for generations to come. This was a key aspect of the established Renaissance tradition of celebrating figures from Antiquity as models, a custom in which artist played a central role. A famous example is the iconography of the twelve Roman Caesars, after Suetonius' account (c. 69-after 122 AD), which often appeared in sculpted and painted medallions that adorned the palaces of Renaissance Italy.

The specific iconography and style of the present relief are indicative of its period and attribution. The ram's head on the helmet is a symbol often seen in works created within the court of the Medici Grand Dukes in Florence, as it represents a direct reference to Cosimo I, this animal being his ascendant sign and also the zodiacal sign of Emperor Charles V, the Grand Duke's political patron. It appears, for example, in some capitals of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral and on the base of a marble bust of Cosimo I by Clemente and Baccio Bandinelli (Private Collection, Florence). A further reference to the Bandinelli workshop is our artist's treatment of the figure's eyes and hair, together with his choice of oval profile format, which again points towards a sculptor at the Medici court. Comparable examples are Bandinelli's self-portraits in profile now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg, and in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The present sculptor, active in Florence shortly after Baccio Bandinelli's death (1493-1560), would certainly have known these reliefs and the master's work.

Baccio Bandinelli, notoriously skilled with the chisel as much he was with chalk and pencil. dedicated his life to the visual arts when he was still very young, working with his father Michelangelo di Viviano, goldsmith of the Medici family. He entered the workshop of Gianfrancesco Rustici in 1508 and trained there until he reached his twenties, when he travelled to Rome. Benefitting from the patronage of the two Medici Popes, Leo X and Clement VIl, and already possessing masterful skills, he returned to Florence and started working on his most famous masterpieces: 

-       Hercules and Cacus, originally commissioned to be paired with Michelangelo's David, but later positioned at the entrance of Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria, Florence; 

-       a Pietà, that vividly expresses Bandinelli's pain upon the death of his son Clemente in 1555, and for this reason placed in the family tomb in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence: 

-       Orpheus, in the Cortile delle Colonne at Palazzo Medici. Florence

-       Laocoon. a majestic sculotural group in the Uffizi. Florence.