Giovanni Francesco Rustici
Giovan Francesco Rustici, or Giovanni Francesco Rustici, (1475–1554) was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor.
He was born into a noble family of Florence, with an independent income. Rustici profited from study of the Medici sculpture in the garden at San Marco, and according to Giorgio Vasari, Lorenzo de' Medici placed him in the studio of Verrocchio, and that after Verrocchio's departure for Venice, he placed himself with Leonardo da Vinci, who had also trained in Verocchio's workshop. He shared lodgings with Leonardo while he was working on the bronze figures for the Florence Baptistry, for which he was ill paid and resolved, according to Vasari, not to work again on a public commission. Moreover, an echo of Leonardo's inspiration is unmistakable in the much-discussed and much-reviled wax bust of "Flora" in Berlin, ascribed to a circle of Leonardo and most probably to Rustici. At this time, Pomponius Gauricus, in De sculptura (1504), named him one of the principal sculptors of Tuscany, the peer of Benedetto da Maiano, Andrea Sansovino and Michelangelo. It may have been made in France, perhaps in the circle of Rustici, who entered Francis I's service in 1528.
Giovan Francesco Rustici, as depicted in the 1682 edition of Academy of Sciences and Arts, containing the lives, and historical eulogies of illustrious men
Anghiari Battle after Leonardo da Vinci, Bargello museum
A Group of Warriors by Giovanni Francesco Rustici, Palazzo Vecchio
The Florence Baptistery, also known as the Baptistery of Saint John, is a religious building in Florence, Italy, and has the status of a minor basilica. The octagonal baptistery stands in both the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza San Giovanni, across from Florence Cathedral and the Campanile di Giotto.
Florence Baptistery (Battistero di San Giovanni)
Mosaic-covered interior of the octagonal dome
Illustration from Villani's Nuova Cronica, showing Totila razing the walls of Florence in the 6th century, leaving a previous Baptistery intact
View of the Baptistery from southwest with the scarsella on the west side