Giovacchino Fortini, Maenad and Bacchant, marble Giovacchino Fortini (Settignano 1670 - Florence 1736) MAENAD AND BACCHANT pair of marble sculptures, 148x57x27 cm and 151x59x34 cm Literature S. Bellesi, Painting and Sculpture in Florence (16th-19th Centuries) , Florence 2017 The statues represent a young man and a young woman, little more than adolescents, portrayed almost entirely nude, covered only minimally by simple fluttering drapes. The presence of a harpsichord in the left hand of the female figure and a garland with flowers and leaves on the head of the young man suggest that the two figures can be identified with a maenad and a bacchante, mythological figures traditionally associated with the procession of Bacchus, a deity connected to wine and fertility. According to Sandro Bellesi, who has had the opportunity to study the sculptures in question, 'the two figures, defined with a stylistic language rich in refined eclecticism that harmonises the lesson of the great Florentine Mannerist sculptors with the innovations of the Roman-French artistic world of the late 17th and early 18th century, are to be assigned, on the basis of appropriate typological and lexical comparisons, to the autograph catalogue of Giovacchino Fortini, one of the most intriguing and original artistic personalities active in Florence in the late Baroque period, i.e. at the time of the last Medici Like many of Fortini's other sculptural achievements, the pair of statues under examination here is characterised by highly original style data reconciling echoes of the great Tuscan artistic tradition of the 16th century with the Roman Baroque nouvelle vague of the late 17th century. A Florentine response to the hegemonic sculptural culture of Urbe, which was highly appreciated throughout Europe between the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, the fortiniana pair presents, in effect, retro formulations, in which there are evident reflections and a profound knowledge of the work of the most high-sounding names in Florentine statuary art of the late Mannerist age, from Giambologna and Benvenuto Cellini to Pietro Francavilla, the latter an artist who, among other statues, created the enigmatic Ocean or Narcissus in pietra serena in the Pitti Palace, similar, if only in part, to Fortini's Bacchante in the description of the hair and the crown of flowers and leaves The particular choice of the subjects of the two statues allows us to consider these an important prelude to the renowned pair of marbles with a Bacchae and a Bacchante, already in the palazzo Tempi in Florence and later in the Villa del Barone in Montemurlo, catalogued among Fortini's masterpieces, substantially devoted to the mischief and charm of French rocaille sculpture.