An Italian bronze figure of a rearing bull, after a model by Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652-1725), late 17th/early 18th century

red-brown patina beneath black lacquer, upon cylindrical green marble base.

San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, 3 March-11 September 1988, cat. no. 41

L. Camins, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, San Francisco, 1988, no. 41, pp. 120-121
M. H. Schwartz (ed.), European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York, 2008, no. 32, pp. 76-77

Standard wear and surface abrasions. Typical casting flaws and divets throughout (including back of her proper right leg). Minor chipping to base.
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The present bronze relates to a group of The Rape of Europa in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, in which Jupiter, in the guise of a bull, bears the abducted Europa on his back.  The Cambridge bronze is cast as two separate pieces, with a large aperture in the bull's back to accomodate Europa and her drapery, and is the only version of the model known.  Although the presence in of an almost identical wax model in the Museo di Doccia suggests it was made for production in porcelain, no such versions are known; the wax is  documented in an 18th century inventory as the work of Foggini.  Clearly derived from the Foggini model, the present bull is without a mount; alone it recalls the pacing and rearing quadrupeds of Giambologna and his Florentine followers though no other lone rearing bull has survived from those workshops.  Inspiration for the animal ultimately comes from the ancient marble group of the Farnese Bull, in which the sons of Antiope struggle with the similarly rampant bull.  There the head twists left and not right.

RELATED LITERATURE

V. Avery, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Daniel Katz, Ltd., London, 2002, pp. 86-89, no. 7