Julius Caesar

Andrea di Pietro di Marco Ferrucci

ca. 1512–14 · Marble · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Ferrucci’s pleasing Julius Caesar exemplifies the delicately ornate, a l’antica style of Florentine sculpture fashionable in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. While the face is strikingly naturalistic and portrait-like, the profuse amount of surface detail seems to disperse rather than unify form and to reduce the scale of the sculpture rather than create a sense of monumentality. The innovations of Michelangelo’s Brutus emerge when it is compared to Ferrucci’s bust. Ten years older than Michelangelo, Ferrucci was described by Vasari as one of those marvelous "sculptors who without knowing at all how to draw on paper nevertheless brings their works to a fine and praiseworthy finish with their chisels." He became head of the workforce at San Lorenzo in 1524, where his expertise in carving marble proved valuable to Michelangelo.

Artist

Andrea di Pietro di Marco Ferrucci

Date

ca. 1512–14

Medium

Marble

Culture

Italian, Florence

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913