The sculptor, goldsmith and murderer Benvenuto Cellini found himself alone one day on a Florentine piazza facing his rival Baccio Bandinelli, whose statues he thought looked like sacks of squashes topped by melons for heads. He fingered his dagger, getting ready to deliver the ultimate killer review. Then he took pity on this pathetic figure sitting on a donkey and stayed his hand.
The Royal Collection, too, has compassion for Bandinelli. It includes him in this often tremendous if slightly baggy show from its huge holdings of Italian Renaissance drawings, alongside Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. You see immediately why his sculptures are so terrible, for in a section with some of the greatest nudes ever sketched, Bandinelli’s study of a posing male figure has still got his clothes on. No wonder his hulking statues lack anatomical conviction.
