Baccio Bandinelli (1493–1560)

• Also called Bartolomeo Brandini, an Italian Renaissance sculptor, draughtsman, and painter.
• Bandinelli was the son of a prominent Florentine goldsmith.

• As a boy, he was apprenticed under Giovanni Francesco Rustici, a sculptor friend of Leonardo da Vinci.

• Bandinelli was a leader in the group of Florentine Mannerists.

• Bandinelli made several drawings of the Donatello reliefs, though later in life he disparaged them in a letter to Cosimo I de' Medici.

• Hercules and Cacus was commissioned by the Medici pope Clement VII, who had been shown a wax model.

• Bandinelli's drawings, which have in the past masqueraded as Michelangelo's in connoisseurs' collections, came into their own in the later twentieth century. 

• Among Bandinelli's pupils were Vasari and Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati).

• His sons Clemente, a collaborator in his studio, and Michelangelo Bandinelli were also sculptors.

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