AFTER THE ANTIQUE, ITALIAN, 17TH CENTURY

Academically educated artists and collectors would have interpreted the isolated image of a seated boar as a reference to the bronze fountain known as 'Il Porcellino,' in the Mercato Nuovo, Florence. Pietro Tacca made the model from which the bronze was cast in the 1630s, copied from the celebrated life-size Hellenistic marble given by Pope Pius IV to Cosimo I de'Medici, and is now at the Uffizi Gallery. Antonio Susini produced smaller-scale bronze versions as well. An immensely popular image for Grand Tourists and artists alike, bronze reductions were made throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.