Juno

Giambologna's overbearing personality was not such, however, as to personify and almost monopolise the figurative culture of the later sixteenth century in Florence: a strand of weary, formalistic and academic Michelangelism continued, indeed often officially held sway; an intermediate position between the stylised gravity of this current and the rounded but inert plasticism of Bandinelli was taken by Giovanni Bandini, who continued his master's work on the sculptural decoration of the cathedral enclosure (from this activity, which went on for many years, he got the nickname Giovanni dell'Opera). The great skill of the craftsman fails to redeem from expressive inertia the heavy, opaque forms, accentuated by the perfect frontality of the image.