ROSSI, Vincenzo de'
Italian sculptor. He began his career as an apprentice to Baccio Bandinelli, possibly in 1534. By 1546 he had completed his training and moved to Rome. In 1547 he received his first independent commission, from the society of artists known as the Pontificia Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon, to execute the Young Christ with St Joseph for the chapel in the Pantheon.
The course of events between 1547 and 1558 is unclear. In 1558 Vincenzo is documented in Rome, having completed a marble statue of Pope Paul IV (destroyed 1559; head in Museo Nazionale, Castel Sant’Angelo) and two of the four youths that surrounded the seated figure. While in Rome he executed a number of marble reliefs and portrait busts for secular and religious patrons. By 1558 Vincenzo had also begun two important works in Rome, the marble tombs, figural bronzes and stuccoed reliefs of the Cesi Chapel in Santa Maria della Pace and the marble group depicting Paris and Helen (1558–60; Boboli Gardens, Florence). Ignoring Bandinelli’s exhortations to return to Florence, de’ Rossi remained in Rome to complete these works, as well as the monument to Paul IV.
At the end of December 1560, following Bandinelli’s death, Vincenzo returned to Florence to take up permanent residence. Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici commissioned from Vincenzo de’ Rossi a cycle of twelve Labours of Hercules. This cycle was dedicated to the hero selected as a symbol of freedom and perseverance in victory by the Municipality of Florence first and the Medici later. According to the original project the cycle was meant to ornament a fountain, perhaps destined to the Boboli Gardens. Upon the sculptor’s death, however, which followed that of his commissioner by thirteen years, only seven of the twelve Labours had been completed. Six of them is currently located in the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio. These groups were placed here in 1592 at the behest of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici, the son of Cosimo I, on the occasion of the baptismal celebrations in honour of his first-born son.
In Florence, he completed the statue of Leo X and possibly also that of Cosimo I for the Udienza built by Bandinelli at the north end of the Sala Grande in the Palazzo Vecchio. Between 1561 and 1563 he worked on the choir of the cathedral, and in 1565 he contributed to the ephemeral decorations for the nuptials of Francesco de’ Medici and Joanna of Austria, in collaboration with other artists. At this time he executed a Dying Adonis, which was sent to Isabella de’ Medici at the Medici villa at Poggio Imperiale. It was attributed to Michelangelo from the mid-17th century and is clearly inspired by his art. Among his other works datable to this period are the marble group of Bacchus and a Satyr (c. 1565; Palazzo Pitti, Florence) formerly attributed to Pierino da Vinci, and some of the bronze satyrs on Bartolomeo Ammanati’s Neptune Fountain (c. 1565; Piazza della Signoria, Florence).
While work proceeded on the Hercules groups, de’ Rossi created the small-scale bronze Vulcan at the Forge (1572; Palazzo Vecchio, Florence) for Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany’s Studiolo, and the over life-size marble statues of St Matthew and St Thomas, installed in the cathedral by 1580. From 1584 until his death de’ Rossi was evidently occupied solely with the five remaining Hercules groups. He was buried in his family tomb in the church of Santissima Annunziata, Florence.
De’ Rossi was highly regarded by his early biographers (according to whom he was also an architect), but by the mid-17th century his reputation had declined, and his subsequent obscurity resulted in many of his works being assigned to other artists, most notably Michelangelo.
