Virtue Subduing Vice

Soon the young master, who had attracted the attention even of the staid Vasari, had the opportunity to establish his mastery once and for all; in 1565 Francesco I commissioned from him a group to be placed in Palazzo Vecchio as a pendant to Michelangelo's Genius of Victory; despite the outward constraint of the model, Giambologna builds his work with lively independence, not without a subtle polemical vein: just as Michelangelo's group is locked in a rigorous unitary mass, so the Fleming's invention tends towards an elastic and lithe fluidity, dwelling on the voids that pierce and free the figures. It seems that the group was originally intended to represent allegorically the victory of the Florentines over Pisa.