Niccolò di Raffaello di Niccolò dei Pericoli, called "Il Tribolo" (1500 – 7 September 1550) was an Italian
Mannerist artist in the service of
Cosimo I de' Medici
Cosimo I de' Medici (12 June 1519 – 21 April 1574) was the second and last duke of Florence from 1537 until 1569, when he became the first grand duke of Tuscany, a title he held until his death. Cosimo I succeeded his cousin to the duchy. ...
in his natal city of
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025.
Florence ...
.
Life
Niccolò di Raffaello began as an apprentice to a woodcarver but, while still in his teens, was taken up as an assistant by
Andrea Sansovino.
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work ''Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideol ...
, in his ''
Vite'', mentioned numerous early figures and fountains by Tribolo that can no longer be traced.
A court artist like his successor
Bernardo Buontalenti
Bernardo Timante Buonacorsi ( – June 1608), known as Bernardo Buontalenti () and sometimes by the nickname "Bernardo delle Girandole", was an Italian Scenic design, stage designer, architect, theatrical designer, Military engineering, military ...
, he was expected to function well as a member of a team; like Buontalenti's, his name has been overshadowed by greater personalities. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, connoisseurs attributed to
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspir ...
some of Tribolo's drawings for sculptural
niches and wall fountains, a tribute to Tribolo's bravura as a draughtsman and a sign of Michelangelo's influence on his style.
From 1517 he had returned from
Venice
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
to Florence, working on his own. In his autobiography,
Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini (, ; 3 November 150013 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author. His best-known extant works include the ''Cellini Salt Cellar'', the sculpture of ''Perseus with the Head of Medusa'', and his autobiography ...
tells of his trip to Venice with "Tribolino" for whose son he had stood as godfather. In
Bologna
Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...
, where they saw some Florentine exiles at an inn, the cautious Tribolo, "the most timorous man that I have ever known, kept on saying: 'Do not look at them or talk to them, if you care to go back to Florence'" In Venice, after several days' journey, it soon appeared that
Jacopo Sansovino had no present work for Niccolò, but invited him to drop in again, at his convenience.
Vasari tells of the painter
Giuliano Bugiardini who had been at a loss to draw a file of figures and "foreshorten them so that they should appear all in a row, or how he could find room for them in so narrow a place. Buonarroti, feeling compassion for the poor man, took up a piece of charcoal and sketched a file of naked figures with all the judgment and excellence proper to him, and went away with many thanks from Giuliano. Not long after, the latter brought Il Tribolo his friend to see what Buonarroti had done, and told him all about it; but because Buonarroti had only sketched them in outline, without any shadow, Bugiardini could not carry them out; so Il Tribolo resolved to help him, and he made some rough models in clay, giving them all that rough force which Michelangelo had put into the drawing; and so he brought them to Giuliano. But this manner did not please Bugiardini's smooth fancy, and as soon as Il Tribolo was gone he took a brush and, dipping it in water, smoothed them all down. Il Tribolo, hearing about it from Giuliano himself, laughed at his honest simplicity, and the work was at last finished, so that none would have known that Michael Angelo had ever looked at it."
Soon Tribolo was fully employed by
Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. Many of the lavish productions of 16th-century court artists were ephemeral, like the tableaux and triumphal arches Tribolo created for
Charles V Charles V may refer to:
Kings and Emperors
* Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558)
* Charles V of Naples (1661–1700), better known as Charles II of Spain
* Charles V of France (1338–1380), called the Wise
Others
* Charles V, Duke ...
's grand entrance into Florence in 1536. Diplomatic errands were also required: on Cosimo's orders, Tribolo went to Rome to induce
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspir ...
to return to Florence and take up his uncompleted stairs in the vestibule of the
Laurentian Library
The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana or BML) is a historic library in Florence, Italy, containing more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books. Built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze u ...
. In more lasting projects, Tribolo contributed the architectural framework of the rich funeral chapel of Cosimo's consort
Eleonora di Toledo Eleanora or Eleonora may refer to:
People
* Eleanora (name)
* Eleonora, three 17th century Swedish queens consort
* Countess Palatine Eleonora Catherine of Zweibrücken (1626–1692), Swedish princess
* Eleonora Luisa Gonzaga (1686–1741), Duc ...
, rebuilt the old Villa Medici at
Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano is a town and ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of Prato in the region of Tuscany in Italy, located south of the provincial capital of Prato. It has 9,944 inhabitants. The town is the birthplace of Filippo Mazzei.
Dem ...
, where he apparently designed the new stables, and in the last year of his life laid out the first axial development of the
Boboli Gardens
The Boboli Gardens ( /’bo.bo.li/) is a historical park of the city of Florence that was opened to the public in 1766. Originally designed for the Medici, it represents one of the first and most important examples of the Italian garden, which l ...
behind
Palazzo Pitti
The Palazzo Pitti (), in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present ...
, where he oversaw the construction of the amphitheatre before his premature death in 1550. In his gardens there and at the
Medici villas
The Medici villas are a series of rural building complexes in Tuscany which were owned by members of the Medici family between the 15th century and the 17th century. The villas served several functions: they were the country palaces of the Medic ...
La Petraia and
Villa Castello, Tribolo is often credited with fathering the Italian garden— insofar as the phenomenon could have a single father.
Villa di Castello
At his mother's
villa
A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the f ...
, where he had spent his youth, the
Villa di Castello at
Rifredi near Florence, Grand Duke Cosimo entrusted Tribolo from 1536 with the layout of a garden that was to illustrate, with an elaborate iconological program worked out by one of Cosimo's
court humanists, the beneficent influence of the recently ennobled Medici, seen to be watering Tuscany, as a source of water fertilizes a garden. With the aid of hydraulic engineer ''Piero da San Casciano'', Tribolo engineered a sequence of terraces with fountains that began at the upper end in the "wild" garden— where the civilizing Medici touch had not yet been felt— with a sculpture of ''The Apennines'' (by
Ammanati); once in the formal
terraces the tamed water passed in linear canals to two sculptural fountains placed along the central axis.
[Later additions to one side of the Villa have shifted the original axis of the centre of the villa.] The marble bases of both were sculpted by Il Tribolo and his assistant
Pierino da Vinci, 1538 –1548, but the bronze figures that formerly crowned them have been moved to Villa La Petraia:
Hercules and Antaeus by Ammanati, and Florentia (Florence) as a classical ''Venus anadyomene'' ("Venus wringing out her hair") by
Giambologna
Giambologna (1529 – 13 August 1608), also known as Jean de Boulogne (French), Jehan Boulongne (Flemish) and Giovanni da Bologna (Italian), was the last significant Italian Renaissance sculptor, with a large workshop producing large and small ...
. The fountains were the earliest fully sculptural fountain complexes set at the centre of garden spaces, and they set the example for the seamless development of fountains as major settings for figure sculpture, in a sequence that extended unbroken into the early 20th century. Against a retaining wall at Villa Castello, Tribolo positioned a
grotto
A grotto or grot is a natural or artificial cave or covered recess.
Naturally occurring grottoes are often small caves near water that are usually flooded or often flooded at high tide.
Sometimes, artificial grottoes are used as garden fea ...
on the central axis: it was completed under the direction of
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work ''Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideol ...
with bronze birds from whose beaks water once spurted, sculpted by Giambologna and Ammanati (now in the
Bargello
The Bargello, also known as the or ("Palace of the People"), is a former public building and police headquarters, later a prison, in Florence, Italy. Mostly built in the 13th century, since 1865 it has housed the , a national art museum.
It ...
). In 1581
Montaigne
Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne ( ; ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the essay as ...
was so impressed with the copious ''
giochi d'aqua'' at Castello that he included a description of the gardens in his travel journal.
Minor works
*''Ganymede riding the Eagle'', bronze,
Bargello
The Bargello, also known as the or ("Palace of the People"), is a former public building and police headquarters, later a prison, in Florence, Italy. Mostly built in the 13th century, since 1865 it has housed the , a national art museum.
It ...
, Florence.
* Doorway reliefs, (1525–27) Basilica di San Petronio, Bologna.
* Reliefs, Santa Casa in the Cathedral of
Loreto, (1530–33), a project that had been begun under the direction of Sansovino in 1513.
A symposium on the occasion of Tribolo's cinquecentennial in 2000 was held at
Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano is a town and ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of Prato in the region of Tuscany in Italy, located south of the provincial capital of Prato. It has 9,944 inhabitants. The town is the birthplace of Filippo Mazzei.
Dem ...
, with contributions by several art historian
The
Bizzarria of
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025.
Florence ...
was rediscovered at the ''Villa Castello''.
References
*Giorgio Vasari, ''Le vite...''
Poggio 2000The Garden of Castello*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20051111075228/http://www.scultura-italiana.com/Biografie/Tribolo.htm Niccolò Pericoli, detto Il Tribolo(illus. detail of the "Venus" fountain, now at La Petraia
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tribolo, Niccolo
1500 births
1550 deaths
16th-century Italian sculptors
Italian male sculptors
Sculptors from Florence
Italian Mannerist sculptors