Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence

Description

Describes the transformation of Italian sculpture during the neglected half-century between the death of Michelangelo and the rise of Bernini. This book follows the Florentine careers of three major sculptors - Giambologna, Bartolomeo Ammanati, and Vincenzo Danti - as they negotiated the politics of the Medici court and eyed one another's work.

Michael W. Cole is professor of art history at Columbia University. He is the author of "Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture" and the coeditor of "The Idol in the Age of Art", among other books.

Finalist for the 2012 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, College Art Association One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2011 "In this stimulating offering, Cole investigates sculptural enterprise in Florence during the second half of the 16th century. Focusing on Giambologna, Bartolomeo Ammanati, and Vincenzo Danti, this book is no mere survey of trends or compilation of biographies. It concerns what being a sculptor meant in this dynamic time and place and the nature of the plastic arts themselves. The study, which is as ambitious as its subjects were, succeeds brilliantly... [P]rofoundly original..."--Choice "The book is beautifully illustrated and structured around clearly defined thematic chapters, and Cole weaves, or perhaps it would be better to say, builds an art historical text that is just as monumental as the sculptural works he discusses."--Jennifer D. Webb, Sixteenth Century Journal "Cole is persuasive and unsettling enough to ensure that no reader will be able to look at a sixteenth-century sculpture the same way again."--Cammy Brothers, Oxford Art Journal