Attributed to Baccio (Bartolommeo) Bandinelli (Italian, 1493-1560): A good mid-16th century Florentine carved white marble oval profile portrait relief of a gentleman

possibly depicting the Duke Cosimo I de'Medici

Footnotes

Baccio or Bartolommeo Bandinelli, actually Bartolommeo Brandini (1493-1560) was a Renaissance Italian sculptor, draughtsman, and painter.

Comparative literature
Volker Krahn in, Baccio Bandinelli, Scultore e Maestro (1493-1560), exh. cat, ed. Detlef Heikamp and Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, 2014, pp. 352-55, nos. 26-27 (the small bronze busts); compare for the large busts of Cosimo in marble and bronze, pp. 304, no 17 and p. 310, no.20); for a 'young' marble bust in New York, p, 582, no. XI; and for a chalk portrait of Cosimo in three-quarters view, pp.42-21, no 53.

The image
This intimately conceived portrait oval is of good quality and is possibly from the world of the great Medicean sculptor and bitter rival of Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli. The chips at the edge of the oval edge suggest it might have been roughly prised out of a tight frame or setting into a wall, perhaps on a Mannerist tomb or mantelpiece.

The subject, wearing a contemporary lace-trimmed collar, resembles Cosimo I de' Medici, who was Bandinelli's employer as a court sculptor, though the profile of the nose varies slightly from other marble portraits and small bronze medals commemorating the Duke's reign and principal successes in public architectural and sculptural projects.

Bandinelli's career and aspirations
Born eighteen years after Michelangelo (1475-1564) who was his hero and the target of his emulation and seven years before Cellini (1500-1571) who conversely was his arch-rival, enemy and nemesis in terms of reputation, Bandinelli was a major sculptor of the High Renaissance in Florence and later in Rome. It was however his fate to be overshadowed by the 'divine' and 'terrifying' Michelangelo however hard he tried to match his achievements and to be blackguarded by the jealous Cellini in his autobiography. Bandinelli's and Cellini's professional rivalry and personal animosity famously deteriorated into schoolboy behaviour with the two making rude gestures and shouting insults at one another in the street much to the disapproval of the strait-laced Spanish grandee and Duchess, Eleonora da Toledo. To add to Bandinelli's misfortunes on the public relations front, Giorgio Vasari, painter, impresario of Medici commissions and latterly biographer of Florentine artists, also took against him, on account of his social pretensions and obsession with outdoing their joint hero, Michelangelo. In artistic terms this led him obsessively to produce self-portraits, emphasising his status as a Florentine aristocrat and a Knight of the Order of Santiago.

The Identity of the sitter
Bandinelli's oeuvre in marble is to be found mainly in Florence and Rome, runing to some twenty commissions comprising many individual statues and reliefs (e.g. the 88 panels of the choir enclosure in Florence Cathedral, some of which are signed and dated 1555) as well as several portrait-busts or reliefs of Duke Cosimo made in rivalry with Cellini, and of the Duke and his wife on their tomb in SS, Annunziata, as well as other distinguished, affluent or noted Florentines.

The depiction of the gentleman on the present oval for which no very distinguished provenance can be claimed at present closely resembles a similarly small portrait relief of Cosimo that seems to have been cut down into a neat rectangle of even smaller size - 22 x 17.5cm (Fig. 1). The two portraits share the same intense stare which seems to have been a specific feature of the sitters face with the eyes sometimes shown as exophthalmic, perhaps owing to an over-active thyroid. This comparable turned up in the posthumous sale of the distinguished collection of Giorgio Uzielli (1903-1984) after the death of his widow at Sotheby's New York on the 26 January 2012, lot 303. A decade or so later the same relief was subsequently re-offered at Christie's New York, on 22 April 2021 catalogued more positively by Eike Schmidt (Director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence) and Janet Sisk as 'attributed' to Bandinelli, rather than to 'his workshop'.

The unusually bulbous line of the upper forehead (with a shock of hair combed forward over it) rising above a distinct indentation is very close to the Uzielli image. As such if this is also a portrait of the Duke, it could be that the slightly aquiline ridge of the nose here is truer to the sitter in real life with the straighter and thus more flatteringly Grecian and 'ideal' line shown on most of his portrait depictions. Here the chin is strong and firm although perhaps a little less projecting than in the other portraits and the hair of the beard is less closely cropped and more curling.