The Wild Boar
after Pietro Tacca
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1770 - circa 1899
Materials
Bronze on bronze base and marble plinth
Measurements
90 x 110 x 65 mm
Place of origin
Italy
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 436761
Summary
Bronze, The Wild Boar, Italian, late 18th-19th century. Bronze statuette after The Wild Boar, also known as Calydonian Boar or Il Porcellino, mounted on a bronze base and marble slab.
Full description
The Porcellino is after a Hellenistic marble first recorded in 1556 and acquired soon after by the Medici; it is now housed in the Uffizi (inv.no.1914 no. 63). Cosimo II de' Medici commissioned Pietro Tacca (1577-1640) to produce a bronze copy which adorns a fountain in the Mercato Nuovo, Florence (see Haskell and Penny 1981, no.13, p.161-2). Tourists rub the boar’s snout to ensure a return visit to the city. Miniature versions like this cast in bronze were popular as souvenirs of the Grand Tour. Alice Rylance-Watson October 2018
Provenance
Purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) from Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow, C. St J. (b.1936) in 1984.
Credit line
Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by the National Trust in 1994)
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