(16th-century public heroic statuary of male nudes, so there will be (small) penises, if that sort of thing worries you)
An ideal male body — or so Kenji Matsuoka pronounced it this morning:
(#1) Side view of [Italian] Oceano / [Latin] Oceanus by Giambologna (1576) at the Bargello National Museum, Florence: a simultaneous imagined depiction of Neptune, the Roman god of waters and oceans (whose Greek counterpart is Poseidon); and flattering tribute to the sculptor’s Medici patron — in a single beautiful male body
Giambologna’s largest marble; it once crowned a fountain in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, but in 1911 it was moved to the Bargello Museum.
KM no doubt chose this particular view of the statue because it shows Oceano’s / Neptune’s penis — a routine feature of public heroic statuary of male nudes (at some times in some places). This is the standard small penis of classical statuary, modestly situated in this work.
I’m assuming that the other elements of the sculpture (like Neptune’s signature creature, the dolphin) are assembled for their individual symbolic values, rather than (as in Michelangelo’s David) illustrating a larger story.
