PACING HORSE AND BULL

The pacing horse is a reduction of Giambologna's horse from the monumental equestrian bronze statue of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, erected in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence in 1594. Giambologna was inspired by the antique over-sized bronze of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (now in the Capitoline Museum, Rome), which had been set up as the focus of Michelangelo's rearrangement of the Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome. A version of the Pacing Horse was sent as a diplomatic gift to Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612 and was inherited by his brother, King Charles I. According to Dimitrios Zikos, it is likely that the model of the pacing bull is the same as the bronze bull recorded on 14 March 1588 as being in the Galleria del Casino di San Marco (Paolozzi Strozzi and D. Zikos (eds.), Giambologna gli dei, gli eroi, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, 2006, p. 242, no. 45). The attribution to Giambologna is confirmed through comparison with the bull in his Lion attacking a bull and by the explicit mention in the 1609 posthumous inventory of the collector Benedetto Gondi to 'a wax bull by the hand of the said (Giambologna)'. The model was popular in the 17th century, as is highlighted by its appearance on a table in Willem van Haecht's painting of the gallery of Cornelis van der Geest. The refined cast and colour of this pair place them in the early seventeenth century.