Fontana del Porcellino

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The "Fontana del Porcellino"
The original of the bronze in the Museo Bardini
The bottom of the pool by Pietro Tacca

The Fontana del Porcellino is one of the most popular sculptures in Florence and is based on a Greek model. The sculpture of the boar on the edge of the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo near the Ponte Vecchio has been and continues to be copied internationally.

History and shape

The popular name of the bronze statue Porcellino , which means "piglet", is misleading because it shows a fully grown wild boar, a boar . The animal, depicted on the guard before the arrival of the hunters, goes back to a Roman copy of a Hellenic marble sculpture that Pope Pius IV gave to Cosimo I de 'Medici in 1560 during his visit to Rome . The original marble is now in the Uffizi . In 1612 Cosimo II. De 'Medici had commissioned a bronze copy from Pietro Tacca as jewelry for the Palazzo Pitti . The wax model was made around 1620 because of other and more urgent orders from the Grand Duke, such as the four Moors in Livorno or two fountains in Piazza SS. Annunziata, the casting was not carried out before 1633. Although it is a replica, the naturalistic representation of Details such as the fur of the animal, Tacca's extraordinary skills as a bronze sculptor, who was Giambologna's best pupil . The original of the boar is in the Bardini Museum.

A few years after the casting, Ferdinando II. De 'Medici decided to transform the sculpture into a fountain, which has been documented under the loggia of the Mercato Nuovo since at least 1640. In addition to its decorative function, the fountain primarily had a practical function because it served to supply water to the traders who sold fine fabrics such as silk, brocade and woolen cloths under the loggia. The diminutive "Porcellino" was also created at this time. Tacca also created the original bronze basin (now in the archives) to collect the water from the fountain. The original location was in front of the pharmacy of the same name del Cinghiale (= boar) on Via Por Santa Maria, opened in the first half of the 18th century and a meeting place for intellectuals. In the nineteenth century, the sculpture was moved to its current location to improve the flow of traffic.

The base is octagonal with the front stretched out to accommodate a small basin into which water falls from the pig's mouth. The base is embellished with a representation, again in bronze, and shows swamps as the living environment of the animal, where the wild boars with plants and animals such as amphibians, reptiles and mollusks, all of which are remarkable realism. Pope Clemens had the base renewed in 1897 - after damage from wear and tear [it was a new version from 1988 by Ferdinando Marinelli , as an explanation on the right: the original, together with the pig, in the Bardini Museum since 2004.?]

Superstition

It is popularly said that touching the pig's nose brings luck that shines from the daily polishing of hundreds of hands. The full procedure for getting a good omen would be to put a coin in the pig's mouth after rubbing the pig's nose: if the coin falls behind the grate where the water goes, the procedure will bring good luck, otherwise not . In fact, the inclination is such that only the heavier coins that the city council collects there fall into the grid.

Trivia

In the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 , the protagonists see the statue in the Room of Requirement, in which Harry is looking for Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem.

In Hans Christian Andersen's story "Das Metallschwein", plastic plays an important role; the pig shows a little boy the way to art.

Copies

the polished nose
The copy from Sydney
One of the copies in the Nordkirchen Castle Park
Copy 2 in Nordkirchen
Munich
Aix en Provence

There are numerous copies and replicas of the fountain figure all over the world, for example in the castle of Enghien in Belgium or on the "Place Richelme" square in Aix-en-Provence in France.

Also known is the copy in front of the Sydney Hospital , which was donated in 1968 by the Florentine Marquise Fiaschi Torrigiani in memory of the Italian doctor Piero Fiaschi, who worked in Australia , with the same promise of happiness as in Florence. The coins collected in this way will benefit the hospital.

In Germany, in addition to the sculpture in front of the Hunting and Fishing Museum in Munich in the park of Nordkirchen Castle, there are several copies. Further copies or replicas can be found at the following locations:

Australia
Denmark
  • Brotorvet - Holstebro, Denmark
Germany
France
Great Britain
Italy
Japan
  • House on the Hill, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan
Canada
United States

literature

  • Luciano Artusi, Tante le acque che scorrevano a Firenze, itinarario tra i giochi d'acqua delle decorative fontane fiorentine , Semper, Firenze 2005.

Web links

Commons : Porcellino  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Sources and individual references

  1. ↑ Luciano Artusi, Tante le acque che scorrevano a Firenze, itinarario tra i giochi d'acqua delle decorative fontane fiorentine , Semper, Firenze 2005
  2. ↑ The Marble Hall in Weissenburgpark Stuttgart, ed. by K. Bossert, J. Breuer u. a., Stuttgart 1985, p. 13f.
  3. ^ Judith Breuer u. Gertrud Clostermann: The buildings in the Stuttgart Weißenburgpark: To the restoration ..., in: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg, Nachrichtenblatt ... 2/23 (1994), P. 50f.
  4. ↑ Andy Thornton. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 5, 2016 ; accessed on May 5, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.andythornton.com

Coordinates: 43 ° 46 ′ 11.59 "  N , 11 ° 15 ′ 15.24"  E