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Aesop
Tribolo, Niccolò, born 1500 - died 1550 - Enlarge image
Aesop
- Object:
Statuette
- Place of origin:
Florence, Italy (made)
- Date:
second quarter of 16th century (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Tribolo, Niccolò, born 1500 - died 1550 (artist)
- Materials and Techniques:
Bronze
- Museum number:
2626:1, 2-1855
- Gallery location:
In Storage
This bronze statuette is made by Niccolo Tribolò, in Florence in the second quarter of the 16th century.
The bronze represents Aesop, depicted as a hunchback dwarf holding a rod, and standing astride an owl. Italian sculptor, engineer and garden designer, who was apprenticed in Florence first as a wood-carver with Giovanni d'Alesso d'Antonio and then as a sculptor with Jacopo Sansovino, whom he continued to assist well into the second decade of the 16th century.
Tribolò worked (with a team of other sculptors) on the basilica of the Santa Casa at Loreto and in 1533 he completed Andrea Sansovino's marble high relief of the Marriage of the Virgin which began 1527 and he also helped Michelangelo to complete the Medici tombs in S Lorenzo.
Tribolò also worked around 12 years for Cosimo I in Florence and undertook an extraordinary wide array of works: decorations for state occasions, firework displays, theatrical costumes and décor as well as water conservation and other hydraulic projects. His most influential undertaking was the laying out of the Boboli Gardens behind the Pitti Palace in Florence.
