That the decadence of sculpture into truculent bravado was independent of his direct influence, is further proved by the inefficiency of his contemporaries.
Baccio Bandinelli and Bartolommeo Ammanati filled the squares of the Italian cities with statues of Hercules and Satyrs, Neptune and River-gods.

We know not whether to select the vulgarity, the feebleness, or the pretentiousness of these pseudo-classical colossi for condemnation.
They have nothing Greek about them but their names, their nakedness, and their association with myths, the significance whereof was never really felt by the sculptors.

Some of Bandinelli's designs, it is true, are vigorous; but they are mere drawings from undraped peasants, life studies depicting the human animal.

His "Hercules and Cacus," while it deserves all the sarcasm hurled at it by Cellini, proves that Bandinelli could not rise above the wrestling bout of a porter and a coal-heaver.

Nor would it be possible to invent a motive less in accordance with Greek taste than the conceit of Ammanati's fountain at Castello, where Hercules by squeezing the body of Antaeus makes the drinking water of a city spout from a giant's mouth.