Fountain with Hercules striking Cacus with his club / Study for a fountain and design for a pilaster and capital
XVI century. Pencil, Grey-brown ink on laid paper.Not on display
In its coarse execution and cursory simplification of the anatomy of the figures, this drawing is not dissimilar to the handling found in a small group of pen-and-ink drawings generally accepted as by Giambologna. A number of these were included in the exhibition Il Primato del Disegno, held in Florence in 1980. Especially similar in conception is a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, for Giambologna´s Fountain of Neptune in the Gran Vasca dell´Isolotto in the Boboli Gardens, Florence, datable around 1575.
This is a good drawing, very possibly by the maser himself, reflecting the milieu of Florentine sculpture in the second half of the sixteenth century.
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.303
