Flanders-born sculptor Giambologna in 1564 follows his first important work, the Fountain of Neptune, with an elegant Mercury (of which he will actually do four versions), a gravity-defying cast bronze that conveys the impression of swift, graceful motion and weightlessness.

Poised on one foot, supported by a zephyr, the god raises one arm to point heavenwards, in a gesture borrowed from the repertory of classical rhetoric that is characteristic of Giambologna's maniera.

Florentine sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino completes a bronze relief of a relic for the altar of San Marco sometime before 1565.