Once upon a time there was a centaur named Nesso and travelers tragled the travelers on the Evento or Licorma river (Greek region of the Etolia). Heracles, heading to Trachis with his family, entrusted him with Deianira but Nesso tried to rape her and Heracles killed him with a poisoned arrow dipped in the blood of the Idra di Lerna. A Flemish sculptor named Jean De Boulogne aka Giambologna around 1598 sculpted one of his many masterpieces with great skill, the marble group of Hercules and the Centaur Nesso. The work of great emotional impact certainly proposes forms and styles different from the classic models , resuming Michelangeioleschi motifs, but with a strong sense of dynamism. In 1599 he was placed on the song of the Carnesecchi formed by the quadrivio composed of via Rondinelli, via Cerretani, via Panzani and via dei Banchi.
And it is in this place that the marble group of Giambologna creates a real fulcrum of the area so much so that the adjacent palace took the name of Centauro also known as the Palazzo delle Cento Windows. Over time, the sculpture of the centaur that was moved first under the Uffizi Gallery, then placed on a pedestal from which a source arose in the square at the crossroads with via Guicciardini-Borgo S.jacopo-via dei Bardi and finally transported by the architect Francesco Leoni in 1838 in the Loggia dei Lanzi where it is currently located.
If you want discover better the city of Florence come with us, we are running a Free walking tour that start from Santa Maria Novella square in front of Minerva hotel. Our Florence free tour is the original one, where with our official tour guide you have the possibility to discover many secrets of this renaissance city.
