Giovanni Francesco Rustici

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,[4] and that after Verrocchio's departure for Venice, he placed himself with Leonardo da Vinci, who had also trained in Verocchio's workshop.

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.

The figure blew a jet of water that spun a whirligig with four vanes in the form of butterfly wings, according to Giorgio Vasari's description.

[5] According to James Draper, Rustici's figure drew inspiration from the mid-fifteenth century gilt-bronze fountain Winged Infant now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Some glazed terracotta bas-reliefs in the technique familiar from the della Robbia workshops, are attributed to Rustici, notably a Madonna and Child in the Bargello and a Saint John the Baptist in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.