The Recent Vincenzo Danti Exhibition in Florence

An exhibition recently at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, was the first-ever devoted to Vincenzo Danti (1530-77), a many-sided sculptor, architect, goldsmith, painter and art theorist, who worked in his native Perugia, in Rome and (from 1557 to 1573, during the reign of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici) in Florence. Not only did the 23 works in the exhibition represent some of the most beautiful and technically accomplished sculpture of the cinquecento, but the miniscule exhibition and its massive catalogue have gone a long way towards transforming our knowledge of Danti, enabling us to reconsider here some of the many nagging questions of attribution and technique that bedevil the oeuvre of this chameleon-like sculptor. (Quotes from original text)