TRIBOLO, Niccolò
(b. 1500, Firenze, d. 1558, Firenze)

The Goddess of Nature

c. 1529
Marble
Musée National du Château, Fontainebleau

This stand for an antique vase was designed by Tribolo. The attributes of Artemis of Ephesus have been adopted in highly explicit terms to create a Goddess of Nature.

Sixteenth-century French artists emphasized the link between nature and femininity in the polymast (many-breasted) figure of the goddess Nature, often depicted with many breasts, and draped in plants and many animals. A telling example is the polymast statue of Nature by Tribolo, designer of the Boboli Gardens, sent to François I around 1529 for the Palace of Fontainebleau.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.