Baccio BandinelliArticle Free Pass Baccio Bandinelli, (born Nov.
12, 1493?, Florence [Italy]—died Feb. 7, 1560, Florence),
Florentine Mannerist sculptor whose Michelangelo-influenced
works were favoured by the Medici in the second quarter of the
16th century. Bandinelli was trained as a goldsmith by his
father, Michelangelo di Viviani de’ Bandini, who was patronized
by the Medici family. Showing a marked predilection for
sculpture, he worked under the sculptor Giovanni Francesco
Rustici and became one of the principal artists at the court of
the Medicis, grand dukes of Tuscany. He founded an academy for
artists in the Vatican (1531) and one in Florence (c. 1550).
Accounts of Bandinelli given in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives and in
the Autobiography of the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini represent
him as jealous, malignant, and untalented. He assumed the
surname Bandinelli in 1530. Bandinelli’s surviving works prove
him to have been a more distinguished sculptor than his
contemporaries allowed. His copy of the Laocoön (Uf