Desiderio da Settignano, Bust of Marietta Strozzi (1455)

marble, h. 52,5 cm
Berlino, Staatliche Museum

Compare Ugo Guidi to Desiderio da Settignano is not a strange action but is an action that wants to make a comparison between two sculptors from different ages but that present some common characteristics.
Both Guidi and Desiderio have had a teacher who brought in sculpture the rules of classicism: for Guidi, Arturo Dazzi and for Desiderio, Donatello. But Guidi and Desiderio reacted against this heroic and emphasized art realizing docile and humble creations with a common intention: representing children and little girls.
The bust of Marietta Strozzi sculpted in 1455 is one of the most touching and famous creations of Desiderio da Settignano. Desiderio loved to sculpt children and young girls, maybe because when he worked he was very young (he died when he was thirty-four years old), and he managed to do this with an incredible refinement: the marble, in the bust of Marietta Strozzi, seems to turn itself into skin and tissues under the hands of Desierio. The skin is soft, the hair is styled according to the Florentine Renaissance fashion, the dress is elegant, typical of a Floretine family of high rank such as the Strozzi family, and the body of the girl is that of a young woman who is not still mature.

A project by
Federico Giannini

Museo Ugo Guidi
(Forte dei Marmi)

Associazione Amici
del Museo Ugo Guidi
Onlus


Humanities
Computing

University of Pisa