Apostle (Saint John the Evangelist?) Detail of

The sculpture depicting an apostle (probably St. John the
Evangelist) is part of the sculptures from the funerary monument to Gaston de
Foix, a masterpiece by Agostino Busti known as Bambaia, now exhibited in the
Museum's Sala degli Scarlioni. The
tomb was to be erected in honour of French military leader Gaston de Foix, who
died in Ravenna in 1512, and it was intended for Santa Marta, a favourite
church of the French, where the hero’s body had been taken after the funeral. From documentation regarding the Monument,
we know that it must have been a very demanding task, and it was estimated to
require at least four to six years of work. The commission probably came directly from
the King and the confirmation for this comes precisely from Bambaia who, in his
will written on April 25th 1528, speaks of credit outstanding with the
"Most Christian King of France" (Francois I) for the tomb he made but
had not yet finished. Thanks to these words of Bambaia we can say with
certainty that the monument remained unfinished, as also confirmed by Vasari in
his "Lives". In
the church of Santa Marta the sculptures were found without any connection
between them: standing female characters, seated male figures (as in the case
of the Apostle depicting Saint John the Evangelist), small pillars of various
sizes decorated with trophies, narrative reliefs with scenes of war, all of
masterly execution and piled on the ground, simply because the piece had never
been assembled. For
this reason, putting together the twenty sculptures destined for the funeral
monument is very problematic, given that there is no certain information on how
the tomb was to have appeared in its final version.

If we look at the sculptures that have survived - the recumbent
effigy, the sequence of the apostles, the female figures and the reliefs that
narrate the deceased’s life - we can see the element of political manifesto of
the tomb, aimed at celebrating the deeds and the earthly glory of the young
marshal of France. The
sculptural language of Bambaia marries the knowledge of classical art acquired
in his time in Rome with the great lesson of Leonardo, recognisable in the
eloquent gestures and expressiveness of his characters.