Hercules and the Nemean Lion
by Pietro Tacca, attributed to
The work belongs to a series of the Labors of Hercules described in the eighteenth-century Inventory of Models of the Ginori Manufactory as: “No. 65 Four labors of Hercules, the first with a boar on the shoulder, the second tearing apart the lion, the third with the dog Cerberus, the fourth with the stag [sic], without molds.” The four groups are noted without indication of the material and with the specification that molds are absent. This last piece of information is particularly interesting, as it clarifies that they were not produced by the manufactory’s artisans and excludes their use as models for porcelain translation.
In another entry of the Inventory an Hercules with the globe provided with molds is described, to be identified with the eighteenth-century Ginori porcelain version later modified into Atlas. The source model is to be attributed in its invention to the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca and not to Giambologna, as indicated in the Inventory.
Although there are doubts about the belonging of this specimen to the other four Hercules, on the occasion of the exhibition The Factory of Beauty (Florence, National Museum of the Bargello, 2017), this specimen and three other plaster casts were attributed by Dimitrios Zikos once again to Tacca. The scholar related them to the 1612 commission by Cosimo II de’ Medici intended as a gift to Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales (1594–1612), in whose realization Pietro Tacca, Orazio Mochi, and Andrea di Michelangelo Ferrucci took part. In the exhibition White Gold. Three centuries of Ginori porcelains (Milan, Poldi Pezzoli Museum, 2023), Zikos reaffirmed that the only currently known evidence of this series of Labors consists of our plaster casts and two bronzes known to him, of Hercules and the Nemean Lion and Hercules and the Boar, which, being under study, he prudently hypothesized to be late castings.
The recent restorations (2024) carried out by Gabriella Tonini and Louis D. Pierelli, under the supervision of the Regional Directorate of National Museums of Tuscany, represented by director Stefano Casciu and restorer officer Giulia Basilissi, have led to a deeper study on this subject. Besides confirming the importance of the collection of models at the Ginori Museum for refining knowledge about the workshops of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Florentine sculptors, about commissions, and about the history of taste, the research revealed the particular fortune of the groups of Hercules and the Lion and Hercules and the Boar. Both have appeared in the antique market in nineteenth-century bronze versions, while only the Hercules and the Boar is documented in the current production of the Marinelli Foundry.
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Ercole e il leone di Nemea (da Pietro Tacca)
The work belongs to a series of the Labors of Hercules described in the eighteenth-century Inventory of Models of the Ginori Manufactory as: “No. 65 Four labors of Hercules, the first with a boar on the shoulder, the second tearing apart the lion, the third with the dog Cerberus, the fourth with the stag [sic], without molds.” The four groups are noted without indication of the material and with the specification that molds are absent. This last piece of information is particularly interesting, as it clarifies that they were not produced by the manufactory’s artisans and excludes their use as models for porcelain translation.
In another entry of the Inventory an Hercules with the globe provided with molds is described, to be identified with the eighteenth-century Ginori porcelain version later modified into Atlas. The source model is to be attributed in its invention to the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca and not to Giambologna, as indicated in the Inventory.
Although there are doubts about the belonging of this specimen to the other four Hercules, on the occasion of the exhibition The Factory of Beauty (Florence, National Museum of the Bargello, 2017), this specimen and three other plaster casts were attributed by Dimitrios Zikos once again to Tacca. The scholar related them to the 1612 commission by Cosimo II de’ Medici intended as a gift to Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales (1594–1612), in whose realization Pietro Tacca, Orazio Mochi, and Andrea di Michelangelo Ferrucci took part. In the exhibition White Gold. Three centuries of Ginori porcelains (Milan, Poldi Pezzoli Museum, 2023), Zikos reaffirmed that the only currently known evidence of this series of Labors consists of our plaster casts and two bronzes known to him, of Hercules and the Nemean Lion and Hercules and the Boar, which, being under study, he prudently hypothesized to be late castings.
The recent restorations (2024) carried out by Gabriella Tonini and Louis D. Pierelli, under the supervision of the Regional Directorate of National Museums of Tuscany, represented by director Stefano Casciu and restorer officer Giulia Basilissi, have led to a deeper study on this subject. Besides confirming the importance of the collection of models at the Ginori Museum for refining knowledge about the workshops of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Florentine sculptors, about commissions, and about the history of taste, the research revealed the particular fortune of the groups of Hercules and the Lion and Hercules and the Boar. Both have appeared in the antique market in nineteenth-century bronze versions, while only the Hercules and the Boar is documented in the current production of the Marinelli Foundry.