Per i busti ritratto in marmo di Alfonso Lombardi (con una proposta per il perduto Carlo V e una lettera del cardinale Innocenzo Cibo)

Among the many marble portrait busts executed by the Ferrarese sculptor Alfonso Lombardi (c. 1497 - 1537), Giorgio Vasari mentions only four in his biography of the artist: the portraits of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours and Pope Clement VII, now both in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and two versions of the bust of Charles V, considered lost. The article seeks to retrace the physical history of these four objects, from their genesis to how they were collected. Thanks to a new photographic campaign, a thorough analysis of the Palazzo Vecchio busts can now be made. Viewed from the side, the bust of Giuliano is revealed as a faithful derivation from a medal produced in Rome in 1513. The bust of Clement VII shows that it was conceived in stylistic dialogue with portraits of the pontiff by other artists at the Papal Court: Sebastiano del Piombo, Benvenuto Cellini and Giovanni Bernardi. The second part of the article hypothesises that the lost bust of Charles V carved by Lombardi in 1533 was a portrait in armour. The sculptor’s correspondence reveals that a second version of this bust was made in the same year for Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence: once owned by Cardinal Innocenzo Cibo, this can be identified as the fragmentary sculpture now housed in the fortress in Massa.