The Youthful St John the Baptist

The saint is shown as an adolescent nude seated on an ivy-clad rock formation. The figure is characteristic of seventeenth-century sculpture in Florence. While in Rome the powerful style of Gian Lorenzo Bernini increasingly dominated the field of sculpture, in Florence the heirs of the workshop of Giambologna and the masters in his train, such as the Taccas and the Susinis, continued to produce bronze statuettes, though in a more suave and pictorial manner than was seen in Rome. Marble carvers also developed a style that was quieter and more courtly than Bernini’s Baroque manner. The generation of artists who followed the leading sculptor, Giovanni Caccini - including Domenico Pieratti, his brother Giovanni Battista, and Antonio Novelli - obtained commissions for the city’s churches and palaces and the Boboli Gardens.