AFTER PIETRO FRANCAVILLA (1548-1615) AND TADDEO LANDINI (1561-1596) AND GIOVANNI BATTISTA CACCINI (1556-1613), ITALIAN, LATE 19TH/EARLY 20TH CENTURY

These four impressive figures of the seasons are sculpted after the storied set adorning the Ponte Santa Trinita in Florence, Italy. The bridge was built and rebuilt in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and sixteenth centuries and following its recompletion in 1569, Cosimo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1590-1621) had the newly rebuilt bridge adorned with the Four Seasons on the occasion of his wedding to Maria Magdalena of Austria (1589-1631) in 1608. The festivities also included a ‘Game of the Bridge,’ a spectacle in the form of a mock maritime battle in the Greek fashion (E. Bertini, Piccola Storia di Firenze, Florence, 1898, p. 40). Francavilla conceived Spring; Caccini, Summer and Autumn; and Landini, Winter. These stood on the Ponte Santa Trinita until 1944 which has since been reconstructed. The head of Spring was retrieved from the Arno river and restored to its place in 1961.

Working in a mannerist style, this clutch of artists, along with Pietro Tacca (1577-1640), form a central group of Italian Mannerist sculptors, most of them working as accomplished architects at the time as well. The set originally decorated the Acciaioli Garden in Florence (P. De Francqueville, Sculpteur des Médicis et du roi Henri IV (1548-1615), Paris, 1968, p. 63). Landini's contribution which came to the new location on the bridge after the lifetime of the artist, drew attention from eighteenth-century viewers for its expressive embodiment of the season. The figures rendered by Francavilla and Caccini present the tokens of their season out and forward, over what would be the heads of walkers by on the bridge. The towering set of figures seemingly monumentalized the event celebrated by their public placement and the ever eternal nature of their theme.