CLEVELAND, OH.- The Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired Giambologna’s Fata Morgana, the last known marble by the artist held, until now, in private hands. Widely considered to be the greatest sculptor of the Mannerist period, Giambologna (1529–1608) bridged the Renaissance genius of Michelangelo and the Baroque brilliance of Bernini. The Fata Morgana is a masterpiece within Giambologna’s oeuvre, deploying his favorite subject in marble—the female nude—to express his trademark modeling and dynamism. This extraordinarily rare and internationally renowned sculpture will go on view in a dedicated gallery of the Italian Renaissance collection (117B) of the Cleveland Museum of Art on August 30.


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Giambologna only sculpted about a dozen works in marble, since his Medici patrons forbade him from accepting outside commissions without their explicit consent. Moreover, costly marble was primarily reserved for ducal and major public commissions. The Fata Morgana is among just three marble sculptures by the artist located outside of Italy (and one of only two in the United States), presenting visitors the rare opportunity to see the artist’s work within the wider context of the CMA’s exceptional Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque holdings. A tour de force, the Fata Morgana perfectly exemplifies the hallmarks of form and motion that distinguish Giambologna as one of the preeminent sculptors in the history of European art.


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Giambologna’s other two marble sculptures in collections outside of Italy include Samson Slaying the Philistine in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, acquired in 1953, and the Seated Female Figure in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, acquired in 1982. Much of Giambologna’s sculptural work was executed in bronze, with the support of a large studio. His bronzes, generally small in scale, were prized as diplomatic gifts and spread the sculptor’s fame throughout Europe.

“It would be difficult to overstate the significance of the purchase of Giambologna’s Fata Morgana to the narrative of art history that we are able to tell at the Cleveland Museum of Art,” said William Griswold, director and president of the Cleveland Museum of Art. “We are delighted to share this rare masterpiece with our audiences.”

The Fata Morgana was commissioned by Bernardo Vecchietti in the early 1570s for his villa Il Riposo southeast of Florence. Vecchietti, a prominent banker and advisor to Medici dukes Cosimo I and Francesco I, convinced the artist to remain in Italy instead of returning to his native Flanders, facilitating his appointment as court sculptor. Giambologna lived with Vecchietti for a period of several years and was likely responsible for designing the grotto that was the Fata Morgana’s first home at Il Riposo.

In 1584, poet and art critic Raffaello Borghini vividly described “a grotto made with great artifice, everything charmingly painted inside, [the water] falling into a large oval basin with a delightful sound. Above the basin that receives water, a most beautiful nude woman made out of marble by Giambologna in the act of leaving a cave; one hand is placed on her delicate breast and the other supports a seashell from which the water rises and falls back in to the basin, so it looks like quicksilver; and this beautiful woman represents the ‘Fata Morgana’ (after whom in ancient times the spring was named).”

The sculpture was known as the “Fata Morgana” from the time of its commission, the name taken from that of the spring that flowed into the grotto, but also poetically resonant because of the youth-restoring powers attributed to the fairy in Arthurian legend and relevant for Giambologna’s patron Vecchietti, whose name meant “old.”

The Fata Morgana belonged to the Vecchietti family for 200 years. Eighteenth-century inventories trace its movement, documenting that by 1730 it had been removed from its niche behind the fountain but remained inside the grotto, and by 1755 it had been placed inside the villa. In 1768, English artist and art dealer Thomas Patch offered the Fata Morgana to the wealthy collector Charles Townley of Lancashire, and in 1773 the sculpture was recorded in the possession of Patch in Florence.

On October 14, 1775, Patch requested an export license to sell the work to someone identified only as “an elderly English gentleman,” and on November 20, the export license was granted. Thereafter the sculpture remained in England, misidentified by the time it was owned by a private collector around 1950; it was reattributed to Giambologna only after it appeared on September 13, 1989, having been consigned by Charles Worley of London to Christie’s Wrotham Park sale, where it was catalogued as “an eighteenth-century white marble half-length figure of Venus Marina.”

The Renaissance and Baroque collections at the Cleveland Museum of Art boast peerless masterpieces by Filippino Lippi, Poussin, and Caravaggio. In the last decade, its holdings of Mannerist painting and sculpture have been bolstered by significant acquisitions including Maso da San Friano’s Holy Family with the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, c. 1560 (2019.168); Aurelio Lombardo’s Dido, c. 1525 (2021.2); and Pierino da Vinci’s Death of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and His Sons, c. 1550 (2024.1). The Fata Morgana joins these works, anchoring the museum’s late Renaissance collections and demonstrating its ongoing commitment to acquiring, safeguarding, and sharing the finest works of art from all periods and parts of the world “for the benefit of all the people forever.”


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