Casting a second Rome: Primaticcio's bronze copies and the Fontainebleau project

The dissertation examines a group of bronze copies after ancient marble statues in the Belvedere Cortile. Francesco Primaticcio, Jacopo da Vignola, and assistants produced these copies for the Fontainebleau residence of the French king Francis I between 1540 and 1543. The impressive large statues prompted Giorgio Vasari to describe Fontainebleau as "almost a new Rome." This was the first systematic attempt to copy several celebrated Greek and Roman statues in bronze by means of indexical, full-scale replication, and to re-install them in a new, foreign setting. Chapter one traces the conceptual origins of this endeavor and assesses the particular features of several of the statues. Chapter two reconstructs the bronze project, situates it within its patronage context, and provides a synthetic chronology. Chapter three addresses the display and reception of the completed statues. Chapters four and five discuss the Cleopatra-Ariadne statue as a prototype that would give rise to a new visual topos, the Fontainebleau nymph. As works like Cellini's Nymph of Fontainebleau demonstrate, antique models were transformed and acquired new layers of meaning when shifted to a different environment. This development opened a rich set of possibilities for creative appropriation of antique forms in France that went beyond the generation of replicas.;This study is not a traditional monograph, but rather a focused analysis of a pivotal episode in European cultural history. The episode influenced subsequent princely displays, but more importantly, helped establish a central role for sculptural copies after the antique in artists' academic training and in viewers' cultivation of aesthetic insight. In its broad contours, the dissertation adheres to several notions regarding the sixteenth century: "Rome" was a mental construct as well as a physical place; copies created within an advanced intellectual and artistic climate are worthy of art-historical investigation; and the "Renaissance" was a multi-sited, dynamic phenomenon that can be illuminated through the study of exchanges across geographical boundaries. Other issues explored include the critical discourse surrounding sculptural copies during the Renaissance, Primaticcio's archeologically sensitive approach to copying, and the imperial iconography of large bronze as it related to Francis' ambitions for a universal monarchy.