Turkey
Giambologna, 1567
NaturePre-1850
Overview
About This Work
Turkey (1567) is a life-size bronze sculpture by Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna), the Flemish-born master of Mannerist sculpture who dominated late-16th-century Florence. Measuring approximately 62 x 50 cm, it was commissioned by Francesco I de' Medici to be installed in the artificial grotto of his villa at Castello, where it was displayed among volcanic rocks alongside other bronze birds including a peacock, an eagle, and an owl. The sculpture now rests in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. The turkey itself was an exotic novelty—a bird native to the Americas that had only recently arrived in Europe (c. 1519) and was still regarded as a bizarre and precious luxury object by European nobility. Giambologna's bronze turkey represents a startling departure from traditional sculpture: rather than depicting classical mythology or human heroism, it elevates a domestic bird to monumental scale and technical virtuosity. The work exemplifies Mannerism—an artistic style emphasizing artifice, technical facility (sprezzatura), and the deliberate integration of art with nature. Through its naturalistic yet stylized rendering, Turkey encapsulates Renaissance court culture's fascination with the exotic, the scientific observation of nature, and the artist's power to rival or exceed nature's own creations.
Visual Analysis
Composition
Multi-Facial Design: Unlike Renaissance sculptures (such as Michelangelo's), which typically privilege a primary viewpoint, Giambologna conceived the turkey to be viewed from multiple angles. The composition creates different pictorial effects depending on the viewer's position—a hallmark of Mannerist sculpture that required viewers to circumambulate the work, discovering new complexities and balances with each viewpoint.
Pyramidal Structure: The form is broadly pyramidal. The upright neck and alert head form the apex; the two downward-angled wingtips provide the base, connecting to the ground and emphasizing weight and mass. This pyramidal stability prevents the sculpture from appearing precarious despite its small support points (the slender feet).
Diagonal Composition: Unlike the vertical and horizontal axes of classical sculpture, the turkey's form is structured by opposing diagonals (typical of Mannerism). When viewed from the side, the diagonal profile of the wings intersects with the diagonal line formed between the tail-fan and legs, creating a dynamic, unsettling visual energy.
Complex Void and Mass: The form is punctuated by prominent voids—negative spaces between the wings and legs, and between the neck and the snood (fleshy caruncle below the beak). These voids pierce the bronze mass, creating an intricate interplay of solid and empty space. This interpenetration of mass and void was influenced by recently excavated Greco-Roman sculptures (the Laocoön and Farnese Bull) and demonstrates Giambologna's ambition to rival antique masters.
Feather Detail and Movement: The silhouette is broken by a complex interplay of raised and recessed feathers, particularly around the breast and back. These create a sense of momentary movement, as though the turkey is about to shift position. The raised feathers suggest volume and lightness within the compact form, while also contributing to textural naturalism.
Colour & Light
Bronze Patina: The sculpture displays the natural patina of bronze—muted greens and browns arising from oxidation of the copper alloy. Unlike painted sculpture (polychromy), which would artificially enhance naturalism, this monochromatic surface conveys majesty and power. The patina would have harmonized with the outdoor grotto setting at Castello, where the sculpture was displayed among volcanic rocks and mosaic inlays.
Reflective Surface and Shadow: Bronze is highly reflective, and Giambologna polished the surface to a high sheen in strategic areas, amplifying the work's precious and costly status. The polished surface catches light dramatically, creating dynamic interplay of highlight and shadow. As light moves across the surface throughout the day, the sculpture's appearance transforms, its various textures and contours becoming visible only under changing illumination conditions.
Textural Contrast and Tonal Variation: Despite the monochromatic medium, Giambologna achieved remarkable tonal variety through surface texture. Raised features (feathers, caruncles) cast sharp shadows; smoother areas (feet, neck) remain more luminous. The scaly feet, the soft feathered areas, and the drooping, fleshy neck are all articulated through tactile surface differentiation, creating the illusion of varied plumage in a relatively monochromatic material.
Materials & Technique
Lost-Wax Bronze Casting: The turkey was created using the lost-wax (cire perdue) casting process, a technical achievement of extraordinary sophistication. Giambologna modelled the full-size sculpture in wax (rather than the traditional clay), allowing him to manipulate the material with delicate precision. He reportedly dripped and sliced the wax to create the varied textures and organic forms of feathers and skin.
Direct Casting: Rather than creating a preliminary clay model, then translating it to marble (Michelangelo's method), Giambologna made a finished wax model that was then directly cast in bronze. This direct casting (unrepeatable once cast) demonstrates confidence in his modelling skills and represents a shift in artistic process that prioritized spontaneity and refinement of touch.
Tensile Strength and Engineering: Bronze, when cooled, possesses high tensile strength, allowing virtuoso compositions in which large solid masses (the wings, chest, tail) stand on slender support points (the legs and feet). This engineering achievement—supporting the bird's weight on such minimal contact points—exemplifies Mannerist ambition to resolve compositional difficulty with apparent effortlessness.
Chasing and Polishing: After casting, the bronze was extensively chased (retouched with fine tools to refine details) and polished to achieve the high surface finish and precise articulation visible today. This post-casting refinement was laborious but essential to achieve the level of detail and precious appearance the patron demanded.
Historical Context
Context
The Medici Court and Exotic Collections: The turkey was commissioned for Francesco I de' Medici (Grand Duke of Tuscany, r. 1574–1587), whose court was obsessed with alchemy, magic, and natural philosophy. The Medici maintained a menagerie of exotic animals (lions, leopards, eagles, tigers) as displays of wealth and power. Similarly, the grotto at Castello was an artificial landscape—a constructed environment designed to blur the boundary between art and nature. Within its volcanic rock formations and intricate inlays of shells and semi-precious stones, bronze birds perched as though in a natural aviary.
The Turkey as Exotic Commodity: Turkeys arrived in Europe from the Americas around 1519 and were initially prized as extraordinary oddities. The bird's unusual appearance—its fanned tail, pendulous wattle, bright colouring—fascinated European nobility. By the 1560s, turkeys were beginning to appear on elite menus; Italian cookbooks from the 1570s (including Bartolomeo Scappi's famous Opera) include turkey recipes, indicating the bird's rapid integration into courtly cuisine. Giambologna's bronze turkey thus captures a moment of European fascination with the exotic and newly arrived.
Giambologna as Successor to Michelangelo: Giambologna (1529–1608) was Flemish-born but trained in Rome before settling in Florence as court sculptor. He deliberately positioned himself as the heir to Michelangelo, combining Michelangelo's monumental style with the elegance and technical virtuosity prized in late-16th-century courts. His animal sculptures, though seemingly minor works, demonstrated his range and refinement.
Mannerism and Sprezzatura: The Medici court celebrated Mannerism, an artistic style prizing artifice, complexity, and the appearance of effortless mastery (sprezzatura, a term from Castiglione's courtier handbook). The turkey exemplifies this: while naturalistic in its proportions and textures, the work is fundamentally artificial—a construction that challenges the viewer to question whether art can truly rival nature. The sculpture's intricate design and technical execution reflect the Medici court's fascination with demonstrating human ingenuity and control over nature.
Key Themes
Connection to Nature
Art vs. Nature: The grotto setting explicitly posed the question: Can art rival or exceed nature? By placing bronze birds among actual rocks and in a constructed natural environment, the Medici court created a scenario where art and nature coexist ambiguously. The sculpture's life-like proportions, naturalistic textures, and accurate anatomical details blur the boundary—is the bronze bird a representation of nature, or has the artist surpassed nature by creating something more perfect, more enduring?
Naturalism and Anthropomorphism: While Giambologna rendered the turkey with zoological accuracy—scaly feet, fleshy caruncles, varied feather textures—the pose is subtly anthropomorphic. The upright neck, alert head, and fanned tail suggest human virtues: pride, nobility, dignity. The concentric circles of the breast feathers evoke a courtly ruff (a fashionable garment worn by courtiers), further linking the bird to human society and aristocratic refinement. In this way, nature is not merely imitated but interpreted through a courtly, humanized lens.
The Exotic and the Sublime: The turkey's exotic origin and strange appearance appealed to Mannerist taste for the bizarre and the marvelous. Yet the sculpture also suggests the Romantic Sublime—the power and otherness of nature. The bird's relatively compact, contained form prevents the overwhelming vastness seen in Turner or Van Gogh, but its alert, almost aggressive stance suggests latent energy and potential threat.
Exam Focus Points
Critical Perspectives
Multi-Faciality and Sculpture Theory: Renaissance and Mannerist theorists (notably Benvenuto Cellini) argued that sculpture was intellectually superior to painting precisely because the sculptor had to reconcile multiple viewpoints. A work demanding the viewer's circumambulation, constantly presenting new compositions and visual surprises, was considered more challenging and therefore more admirable. The turkey exemplifies this theory: no single viewpoint exhausts the work's complexity.
Materials and Process: Rudolf Wittkower's influential study Sculpture: Processes and Principles (1977) argued that Giambologna's embrace of modelling and wax (rather than stone carving) fundamentally altered compositional possibility. Modelling is additive and rotatable; carving is subtractive and oriented toward a primary face. This shift enabled the multi-facial, complex, dynamically spiralling compositions that define Mannerism. The turkey's intricate form would have been nearly impossible to carve from marble; the lost-wax process was essential to its realization.
Courtly Taste and Technical Facility: The turkey demonstrates the Medici court's fascination with demonstrating human ingenuity and control over nature. By sculpting a lifelike bronze bird, Giambologna displayed sprezzatura—the ability to resolve extraordinary technical challenges with apparent effortlessness. This was a form of courtly power: the ability to command nature, shape materials, and create lasting artificial worlds.
The Naturalism Debate: Some scholars (notably those following Rudolf Wittkower) have questioned whether the Bargello birds, including the turkey, were actually created as finished artworks or were preliminary models or even functional decoys for hunting. This debate raises important questions about artistic intention, authenticity, and the definition of a finished work. Is rougher surface texture indicative of hasty creation or deliberate expressivity?