Hercules and the Centaur Nessus
Loggia dei Lanzi
Florence Italy
2016

The myth tells that Hercules asked the centaur for helping him and his wife to ford a river, but Nessus tried to kidnap the woman. The demigod killed the monster, but Nessus could give a magical clothing to the woman. This clothing – through several vicissitudes – caused the death of the couple.

“Hercules and the Centaur Nessus” is on display at the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy.

Giambologna, Hercules and Nessus (1599), Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza della Signoria, Florence

Giambologna (Giovanni da Bologna, Jean Boulogne), Flemish-born Italian sculptor. He was the greatest sculptor of the age of Mannerism and for about two centuries after his death his reputation was second only to that of Michelangelo.
In about 1550 he went to Italy to study and spent 2 years in Rome. On the way back he stopped in Florence and was based there for the rest of his life. The work that made his name, however, was for Bologna - the Fountain of Neptune (1563-66), with its impressive nude figure of Neptune which he had designed for a similar fountain in Florence (Ammanati defeated him in the competition). Even before working on the fountain in Bologna, however, Giambologna had begun in Florence the first of a series of celebrated marble groups that in their mastery of complex twisting poses mark one of the high-points of Mannerist art: Samson Slaying a Philistine (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, c. 1561-62); Florence Triumphant over Pisa (Bargello, Florence, completed 1575); The Rape of a Sabine (Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. 1581-82); Hercules and the Centaur (Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, 1594-1600).
Hercules and the Centaur
The proto-Baroque tendencies of the late style of the Mannerist Giambologna are strongly apparent in this work. His movement away from the grace and elegance of the mannerist style and into the realism of the Early Baroque is complete in this group.
This marble group Hercules and Nessus was unveiled by Giambologna in 1600 at the Canto de' Carnesecchi in Florence. It was moved in 1842 from its original site to the Loggia dei Lanzi.
The Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I is a bronze equestrian statue by Giambologna, erected in 1594 in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Giambologna who dominated Florentine sculpture in the late 1500s, explored the subject of horses in models for small bronzes around 1580-1589, which proved popular and continued to be cast long after his death. About 1581, he first contemplated sculpting a colossal horse derived from the famous ancient equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Campidoglio, Rome, and this plan gradually resulted in the equestrian monument of Cosimo I de’ Medidi erected in 1594 in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loggia_dei_Lanzi

The Loggia dei Lanzi, also called the Loggia della Signoria, is a building on a corner of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy, adjoining the Uffizi Gallery. It consists of wide arches open to the street. The arches rest on clustered pilasters with Corinthian capitals. The wide arches appealed so much to the Florentines that Michelangelo proposed that they should be continued all around the Piazza della Signoria.