Fountain of Venus

Already in his first Florentine works, the young Flemish sculptor reacted vigorously against the learned and static post-Michelangelesque figurative culture; the refined Venus of the Grotticella turns in the light with impeccable elegance: the initial impulse is undoubtedly naturalistic, but the sculptor purges it of all dross of sensuality and descriptiveness, intent on a stylistic abstraction that fuses with supreme lightness the linearism of the best Florentine tradition, Gothic and Renaissance, and the luminous colourism of the northern tradition.