Mannerist Head of Woman in marble

At the heart of the sculptural production of the Cinquecento, this imposing head embodies the Mannerist artists' new take on ideal classical beauty, which they reinterpreted according to new aesthetic canons...
The rectangular face, with its smooth planes, has an assertive character marked by large almond-shaped eyes with thick eyelids and a sculpted lacrimal point. Its powerful, straight nose and mouth with sensual, full lips echo the virile feminine type by Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564), from which our artist seems to be taking inspiration here.
Our subject's hair is elegantly distributed on either side of her face, in thick, wavy locks that dissapear into her neck. Structured by a carefully drawn parting, this sophisticated hairstyle is enhanced by a fine ribbon tied at the nape of the young woman's neck. The physiognomy of this face and its sophisticated hairstyle place this sculpture in the wake of the Forentine creations of the High Renaissance by Vincenzo Danti (1530-1576), Giambologna (1529-1608) and Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511-1592), all of whom promoted an elegant translation of Mannerism in their forms. We propose to attribute our work to an artist who was active in the latter's entourage [...]

Our sculpture recalls the essential characteristics of Ammannati's works. Indeed, while her powerful features have as many equivalents in the art of Bartolomeo as in that of his contemporary Prospero Spani (1516-1584), the massiveness of her face, with its square jawline, is more reminiscent of that of his Juno, created between 1556 and 1561 for the fountain in the Great Hall of the Pitti Palace. The wavy, swollen locks of her hair are also particularly reminiscent of those used by the master on the sculptures for the fountain now housed at the Bargello in Florence.