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Bireno and OlimpiaAuthor(s): Bruce BoucherSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2, Notable Quotations at TheArt Institute of Chicago (2003), pp. 60-61Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121058 .

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Bireno and Olimpia

1640/50o

Ferdinando Tacca

(Italian; 1619-1686)

Bronze with light-brown patina and traces of red-gold lacquer; h. 37.9 cm (15 in.), 1. 39.9 cm (15 3/4 in.)

MAJOR ACQUISITIONS CENTENNIAL ENDOWMENT;

THROUGH PRIOR GIFTS OF THE GEORGE F. HARDING

COLLECTION, 1993.348

O rlando Furioso, the celebrated epic by the Italian

poet Ludovico Ariosto, inspired countless works of visual art from its publication in 15I6 through the eigh- teenth century. While the poem's chivalric tales of star- crossed lovers were most commonly depicted in paint- ings, this highly finished, beautifully chased and polished bronze sculpture offers an ingenious presentation of an

episode in which a false lover, Bireno, gathers his clothes and steals away from Olimpia, his sleeping mistress.

The bronze is the work of Ferdinando Tacca, court

sculptor to the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany, who was saturated in the visual language of Jean de Boulogne, the Flemish artist who had occupied his post two generations earlier. Known as Giambologna, this master excelled at

FIGURE I Jean de Boulogne (Italian, born Flanders; 1529-1608).

Sleeping Nymph and Satyr, 1586. Bronze; h. 21 cm (8 1/4 in.), 1. 3I cm

(I2 1/4 in.). Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

creating virtuoso compositions that displayed the human

body in a variety of complex poses, with an emphasis on form over content. Their intricacy and superb finish make

Giambologna's bronzes a touchstone of Mannerist art, and his style remained popular in Florence long after his death. Giambologna also trained Pietro Tacca, Ferdinando's

father, as his principal studio assistant and successor, and established an artistic dynasty that dominated Florentine

sculpture through the late seventeenth century. In addition to his talent and position as court sculp-

tor, Tacca had inherited from his father a number of

Giambologna's sculptural models, which he reproduced and elaborated as small bronzes. In Bireno and Olimpia, Tacca pays direct homage to one of Giambologna's most

popular works, the Sleeping Nymph and Satyr (see fig. i). Copying earlier works was the normal way for artists to extend their capacities, and part of the challenge was

inventing variations on familiar themes. Here, Tacca bor- rowed Giambologna's technique of contrasting an active male figure with a passive female one, but invested the scene with a theatrical intensity all his own. Tacca's com-

position is less unabashedly voyeuristic than his prede- cessor's, but this may have been a concession to the more

puritanical tastes of the court of Ferdinando II de' Medici

(r. 1621-70). Like its antecedent, this small bronze was

designed as a cabinet piece for collectors, who would have been able to pick it up and admire it from all angles.

BRUCE BOUCHER

6o

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