LONDON.- Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, built up his relationship with the French crown with numerous diplomatic gifts, including the creation of new gardens at St-German-en-Laye laid out for Henri IV by the engineer and designer Tommaso Francini, who had designed and built Ferdinando’s own Pratolino gardens, and sculptures by Giambologna that would adorn them. This was in the years 1596–1600, and these and other initiatives would bear fruit in the marriage of Ferdinando’s niece Maria to Henri IV in 1600.

Using newly found documents that change our understanding of the Renaissance garden in France, Blanca Truyols describes the nature of Henri IV’s beautiful gardens – in the latest Mannerist style, using a host of materials (stone, shell, crystal) and rare plants, the extravagant water features in which Francini was a specialist, and an array of statuary. She places this important garden in context and also discusses the diplomatic manoeuvring between the two states.

Alexander Rudigier examines the surviving works by Giambologna associated with the gardens, including a hitherto unknown almost life-size Venus, the only life- size bronze by Giambologna ever to be rediscovered. He discusses it along with the Mercury in the Louvre and the Triton in the Metropolitan Museum in New York also originally for the gardens, as well as with Giambologna’s work as a whole. He traces the career of the German founder of the statue, Gerhard Meyer, working in Florence, who signed the Venus. This leads to an important discussion of the tradition of casting and of Giambologna’s late work in general, in a comprehensive summary of Giambologna’s style.

Alexander Rudigier provides an important new survey of the sculpture of Giambologna’s later career, and identifies for the first time his use of an ‘imperfect’ or ‘unfinished’ effect and its crucial role in his art.

Lars Olof Larsson, author of the standard monograph on Giambologna’s pupil Adraen de Vries, provides a contribution on the new Venus. Bertrand Jestaz, the leading scholar of Italian Renaissance studies in France, provides an introduction and overview.