Allegory of Francesco I de' Medici

The left-hand side of the relief is crowded with figures of demise: an old man tries to warm himself by a fire, a river god exhausts his waters, Saturn eats his children, the Parcae weave the thread of fate. The primary narrative, however, is that of Mercury leading an armoured figure away from his realm out of a space of ruins and into a modern loggia. Most scholars have identified the figure as Cosimo Medici’s surviving son Francesco. It is certainly a Medici portrait resembling Michelangelo’s Lorenzo and Giuliano in the Medici Chapel.

This relief, with its complicated and enigmatic iconography, was probably given to Francesco de’ Medici by the artist. It would have been intended to show Francesco’s incipient power in the city of Florence. Giambologna employed the entire Renaissance esthetic in this work. Especially notable, here, is how he solved the architectural perspective on the right.