Justice

In her left hand, Justice raises a scale (probably not the original). Her outstretched right hand once held a sword. Worthy of note are the elegantly balanced pose, the Michelangelesque mascaron on the chest, and the seemingly wind-tossed ripples of drapery on the back. Technical study by Richard Stone places the statuette’s provenance in a sixteenth-century Florentine workshop.[1]

Our Justice was first published by Wilhelm von Bode in 1910 with an attribution to Francesco Ferrucci del Tadda. Bode considered the bronze a study for the large porphyry statue carved by Francesco and his sons Giovanni and Romolo for the Column of Justice in Piazza Santa Trinita, Florence (fig. 108a). The story of this laborious project began in 1561, when Cosimo I de’ Medici commissioned from Bartolomeo Ammannati a decorative scheme for a gigantic granite column donated by Pope Pius IV.[2] The crowning statue of Justice was installed twenty years later, in 1581. In the interim, Ammannati modeled a provisional terracotta statue and a wood Corinthian capital in preparation for the triumphal entrance of Giovanna d’Austria into Florence on December 16, 1565, on the occasion of her marriage to Francesco de’ Medici.[3] Vincenzo Borghini, who along with Giorgio Vasari supervised the event’s decorative apparatus, described Ammannati’s terracotta statue as a “Justice [with] a crinkled silver skirt with black silk ribbon. Above, the robe open in front. In one hand scales, in the other an unsheathed sword.”[4] The apparatus was dismantled in 1577. Meanwhile, Francesco del Tadda and his sons, specialists in porphyry carving, worked the final hardstone Justice over several years.[5] We can assume that the statue was actually designed by Ammannati, who oversaw the project and in all likelihood made a modelletto for it, as attested by contemporary observers.[6]

The present bronze is certainly not identical to the porphyry Justice in Florence. It differs in many details, but particularly the position of the right arm, which is much more extended in the bronze, and—for obvious technical reasons—the absence of swirling drapery in the porphyry version. This latter point suggests that The Met statuette derives from a model that was meant to be seen from below, an ideal vantage from which to view the fluttering garments. There would otherwise have been no reason to make such a complex design for a routine bronzetto. This further implies that our bronze was cast after a model by Ammannati or the temporary terracotta Justice, a proposal supported by the concordance between Borghini’s description of a “crinkled” skirt and that of our bronze. Moreover, we know that Ammannati envisioned such a device as a component of the final statue. According to Filippo Baldinucci, a month after the installation of the porphyry Justice, Ammannati demanded that it be embellished with a billowy fabric or a cloak of bronze because he thought the figure looked “rather thin.”[7] Similar fluttering skirts can be found in Ammannati’s oeuvre, in particular the marble Allegory of Justice for the Ciocchi Del Monte chapel in San Pietro in Montorio, Rome.[8]

Some of the models made by Ammannati do survive, such as the wax modelletto for the Genio Mediceo and the stuccoforte for the Sapienza on the Benavides Tomb in the church of the Eremitani, Padua.[9] However, it must be said that—taking into account the different materials—they appear somewhat dissimilar in figure type and style to our Justice. James Holderbaum long ago expressed the opinion that the present bronze was possibly cast from a small model by Ammannati.[10] Following his suggestion, James David Draper argued that the Justice resembles bronzes produced by Antonio Susini from Giambologna’s models, but in this case, Susini was possibly working from a model by Ammannati. Indeed, it has the qualities of a Florentine cast, but not those of a bronze by Susini or his workshop. Only the widely opened eyes of our Justice vaguely resemble Giambologna’s almond-shaped eyes. The Justice also does not resemble the series of bronze allegorical figures that have been attributed to Ammannati, one of which is in the Art Institute of Chicago.[11] We might therefore infer that our statuette is a late sixteenth-century Florentine cast after a modelletto made by Ammannati for the Column of Justice.
-FL

Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.)


1. R. Stone/TR, June 27, 2011. Radiographs show evidence of transfixing core pins and unthreaded plugs, which indicate it was not cast by Susini or his workshop after a Giambologna prototype, as has been suggested in the past (see Draper 1978b, p. 156).
2. On the Column of Justice in Piazza Santa Trinita, see Belli 2004 and 2011.
3. “La statua della Giustizia, ch’è sopra la colonna, e l’ordigno del rizzar della medesima colonna, e i suoi ornamenti, è stata opera di messer Bartolomeo Ammannati, scultore e architetto eccellentissimo, e di getter di bronzo ottimo maestro” (The statue of Justice, which is above the column, and [the capital] were the work of Messer Bartolomeo Ammannati, an excellent sculptor and architect, and a master bronze caster). Mellini 1566, cited in Belli 2004, p. 69.
4. “La Giustizia aveva la sottana d’argento arricciata con pelo di seta nera. Di sopra, la veste aperta dinanzi. . . . Nel’una mano le bilancie, nel’altra la spada nuda.” This description is contained in Borghini’s manuscript “Discorso per i legnami,” a useful list of notes on the ephemeral apparatus, Bibioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, ms II.X.100, c. 39v, transcribed in Belli 2011, pp. 120–22.
5. On Francesco del Tadda as a sculptor of porphyry, see Butters 1996, vol. 1, pp. 327–32, vol. 2, pp. 425–26; see also Malgouyres 2016 and Waldman 2007.
6. For instance, the architect Alfonso Parigi; see Belli 2004, p. 72 and n. 156.
7. “Perché all’Ammannato, che a quell’opera soprintendeva, parve che la figura apparisse alquanto sottile, fecevi aggiungere il panno o svolazzo di metallo” (Because to Ammannati, who supervised the work, the figure appeared rather thin, the cloth or metal flourish had to be added). Belli 2004, p. 72.
8. See Loffredo 2011, p. 118.
9. For the Genio, see Francesco Caglioti in Paolozzi Strozzi and Zikos 2011, pp. 404–7; for the Paduan model of the Sapienza, see Luca Siracusano in Beltramini et al. 2013, p. 375.
10. In oral conversation with James David Draper in the 1970s.
11. 1926.398; see Wardropper 2001.