Sculpture is sometimes moving in a way that other artistic mediums are not. Figures frozen in a moment, sometimes violent, sometimes lustful, but always so expressive.
This for example, The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna, with his fingers grabbing, squeezing her marble flesh, and her figure twisted around his, straining, drawing our eye around the whole 360-degrees. I could just stare for hours!
But as well as turning stone into grappling, violent, awful scenes, so too can veined rock become lifeless, a limp form such as Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus…
And sometimes sculpture just immortalised those famous methods of flirtation as familiar to us as they were to a Renaissance Medici – a seductive hair-flick between those two famous lovers: Paris and Helen, by Vincenzo de’ Rossi…
Of course this is just grazing the surface of the incredible sculpture in Florence, but it served as a reminder to me to get drawn into these narratives. Looking for a while, I could swear they’d just start moving like that amazing contemporary piece by Travis Wall…
