Alpheus and Arethusa 1568–70 Battista di Domenico Lorenzi Italian Battista Lorenzi was a Florentine sculptor who apprenticed with Baccio Bandinelli (see acc. no. ) and collaborated in Rome with Vincenzo de’ Rossi on a monumental statue of Pope Paul IV (destroyed by a mob in 1559). After his return to his native city (by 1563), he found success with wealthy clients, producing statues and fountains for their estates in and around Florence. Early works of this nature include a cycle of statues of the four seasons for Giovambattista Guadagni (sent to that abbot’s French residence and now l

Alpheus and Arethusa 1568–70 Battista di Domenico Lorenzi Italian Battista Lorenzi was a Florentine sculptor who apprenticed with Baccio Bandinelli (see acc. no. ) and collaborated in Rome with Vincenzo de’ Rossi on a monumental statue of Pope Paul IV (destroyed by a mob in 1559). After his return to his native city (by 1563), he found success with wealthy clients, producing statues and fountains for their estates in and around Florence. Early works of this nature include a cycle of statues of the four seasons for Giovambattista Guadagni (sent to that abbot’s French residence and now lost); a Triton with Dolphins for Cosimo I de’ Medici (Galleria Regionale, Palermo); and an attributed figure of Ganymede (Boboli Gardens, Florence).[1] We know from Raffaello Borghini’s famed account of art in Florence, Il Riposo (1584), that this marble group, which he describes as one of the most accomplished of Lorenzi’s garden sculptures, was commissioned by Alamanno Bandini for a grotto in the garden of his Villa Il Paradiso.[2] The structure in which the sculpture stood still exists, although it was modified in the eighteenth century and later. Behind a triple arcade open to the elements, a wide room encloses a pool, sheltered by a roof and the building’s three walls. The rear wall is covered with rocaille and stucco figures centering on a pedestal flanked by columns. On this pedestal the sculpture originally stood, its white marble gleaming in the darkened space, its smooth surface contrasted with the pebbly background, and its meaning completed by the pool from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the subject may have been suggested by Borghini himself. The goddess Diana’s nymph Arethusa, tired from hunting, bathed in a river. The river god Alpheus became enamored of her and gave chase; as she was about to be caught, she implored Diana to save her. The goddess rescued Arethusa by transforming her into an underground stream, whose spring is in Sicily. The

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