TRIBOLO, Niccolò
(b. 1500, Firenze, d. 1558, Firenze)

Pan

1549
Bronze, height 26 cm
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

Tribolo's last documented and entirely autograph work is this small, exuberantly twisting figure of Pan, shown playing on the pipes and seated on a vase. It has been described as one of the most beautiful Florentine bronzes of the Renaissance and should also be seen as an indispensable paradigm for the evolution of the free-standing statue in the art of Giambologna and his contemporaries. Tribolo after 1534 was working under the heavy shadow of Michelangelo, and there is something truly Michelangelesque in the structure and modelling of this bronze.