Young River God

Pierino da Vinci was a hypersensitive marble sculptor. His sensuous apprehension of the possibilities of his material are apparent in the beautiful figure of a River God. The affinities of this enchantingly elegant work are not with Cellini or Bandinelli, but with Michelangelo, and though the tone is more intimate and the idiom more feminine, it is clear that Michelangelo’s Apollo was the source of inspiration of the group.

In 1548 Luca Martini, who had been appointed Provveditore at the Ufficio dei Fossi in Pisa by Cosimo I de’ Medici, summoned Pierino to Pisa to carve a marble statue of a River God, which Martini later presented to Cosimo’s wife, Eleonora of Toledo, and she to her brother, Don Garcia, who put it in the gardens of Chiara, Naples. The statue came from the Palazzo Balzo in Naples.