Il Porcellino
after Pietro Tacca
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1850 - 1900
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
76 mm (H); 76 mm (W); 95 mm (D)
Place of origin
Florence
Order this imageCollection
Cragside, Northumberland
NT 1225558
Summary
Bronze; Il Porcellino, the Wild Boar; Italian, after Pietro Tacca; c. 1850-1900. A seated wild boar, based upon a once famous antique marble statue, upon a base embellished with flowers and animals, in front a water trough. A small copy of the fountain by Pietro Tacca in the Mercato Nuovo in Florence.
Full description
A small bronze reduction of the large bronze fountain by Pietro Tacca, made for the Mercato Nuovo (New Market) of Florence. A fierce male boar is seated, its back legs on the ground, its forelegs firmly planted before it. Set upon a grassy terrain with flowers and small animals, including a lizard, a frog and a tortoise. Before the boar is a water basin. An integral base with rounded edges. This is a small and rough modern copy, made for the tourist market, of a celebrated bronze fountain made by Pietro Tacca, the pupil of and successor to Giambologna as court sculptor to the Medici. The original fountain is today in the Museo Bardini, whilst the full-scale modern copy in the Mercato Nuovo is one of the most familiar sights in Florence, the boar’s nose rubbed smooth by countless tourists who touch it for good fortune. The fountain was commissioned from Pietro Tacca by Grand Duke Cosimo II but was only completed in 1634, long after the Duke’s death. The boar is a close copy of a marble statue in the Uffizi in Florence, which was one of the most famous ancient sculptures in Rome in the early sixteenth century before it made its way to Florence, where it is first recorded in 1568. It has long been considered to represent the Calydonian Boar, that was killed by the huntsman Meleager. Small bronze reductions of the marble in the Uffizi were made by Pietro Tacca and by another former pupil of Giambologna, Antonio Susini (1558-1624), as well as in countless other Florentine foundries into modern times. Among the numerous modern examples in National Trust collections are those at Blickling Hall (NT 356662), Hardwick Hall (NT 1129344) and Tatton Park (NT 1297797). Jeremy Warren January 2022
Provenance
Armstrong collection. Transferred by the Treasury to The National Trust in 1977 via the National Land Fund, aided by 3rd Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside (1919 - 1987).
Makers and roles
after Pietro Tacca, sculptor
References
Haskell and Penny 1981: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500 - 1900, New Haven and London, 1981, 13