ITALO-FLEMISH, 17TH CENTURY

While countless artists of the early renaissance had established a tradition for producing the image of a bull in bronze, the most significant exponent was without doubt Giambologna. Casts after his original wax models surfaced from the late 16th century onwards and were numerous in quantity. The subsequent emergence of these bronzes proved to be a great influence to artists throughout Europe, and especially to those from the lowlands. It appears that some of these artists adopted the Florentine concept of fine casting and rich patination and then added incredible naturalism and character. The present bronze is no exception and is, in fact, nothing short of a portrait of an actual type of bull. It stands apart by representing the sort of naturalistic ruggedness that one would expect to find in a painted landscape by any number of Dutch masters. One need only look at Paulus Potter's (1625-1654) painting entitled Young Bull in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (1647), for example, to see a similar attention to the rendition of the bull's anatomy and facial features. As with the Young Bull, the artist responsible for this bronze has demonstrated his understanding of bronze as a medium, by showing great skill in the rendering of the musculature, and a feeling for the surface by meticulously punching areas of the face and neck, and chasing the fur on the head.