The figure of Pietra Tacca has for some time been awaiting attentive historic review and due critical revaluation.

Effectively, despite his great popularity in his own time and the generosity of the sources – suffice it to mention Baldinucci, who honoured him with an exhaustive and eulogistic biography, followed by Giuseppe Campori just a century later – after this Tacca subsided into a silent oblivion in the course of the twentieth century. In the onslaught of the “exhibition frenzy” that has progressively infected almost everyone over the last few decades, it was not the lot of the Carrara artist to receive any exclusive attention in the field of international studies, and he has had no major retrospective before now. Tacca’s bibliography immediately reveals the paucity and partiality of modern studies on the artist; it seems almost as if, from a certain moment on, the deep and vital urge nourishing interest in this artist had somehow failed.

Such interest is instead clearly documented throughout the nineteenth century, on the part of both artists and art lovers, and not only Florentine. Foggini’s literal revival of the figures of the Four Slaves for the base of the monument to Charles II of Spain in 1690 and for the Emperor Joseph I in 1706, can be objectively explained by the presence of the original plaster casts at the studio in Borgo Pinti where the artist had set himself up in 1687. However, it must also be read as a significant tribute to Pietro Tacca on the part of the greatest Florentine Baroque sculptor, and hence as an explicit recognition of the role Tacca had played in the evolution of the Baroque style. It is in fact unthinkable that a personage of such standing would, for reasons of mere convenience, have utilised models which were by then to a certain extent outmoded; on the contrary, we have to acknowledge the evident fact that such invention was, after almost a century, still considered vital and valid.

Moreover, before the recent retrospective exhibition devoted to him at the National Museum of the Bargello, even Giambologna had been at length eclipsed, far removed from the great popularity by which he was surrounded during his long and fortunate existence. From when, that is, he erupted on the Florentine scene, and, despite being practically unknown and a foreigner, managed with incredible speed to sweep before him all the competitors already firmly established in the city.

Among the reasons behind this long shadow that has fallen over the artists and the activities of the Grand Ducal workshops since the end of the nineteenth century, perhaps we cannot rule out a motivation which, if not strictly speaking ideological, can certainly be related to the evolution of the history of critical thought.

The art of Giambologna is in fact marked by certain features that failed to respond to the demands of Romantic culture, being distinctly intellectualist and structured as the production of a team rather than a creation of individual genius. Effectively, the working experience created by Giambologna was from certain aspects analogous to that which characterised the artistic workshops of the Gothic period, and, on a much greater scale, the vast architectural sites. Both such situations, in fact, reflected the need for a sublimation of individuality in favour of an absolute power (either religious or secular) that was distinctly unifying and predominant.

He succeeded in giving life to a workshop in which various artists of unquestionable talent, and each with his own professional autonomy, pooled their expertise in such a manner that the signature of the master prevailed in the finished work, albeit without the individual personalities being mortified. This miracle of tactical balancing, which we owe entirely to Giambologna, responded in perfect synchrony to the demands of the nascent Medici GrandDuchy, rendering him the unrivalled lord of the artistic scene in Florence, and beyond, for several decades.

This miracle also offers a key to interpretation (albeit certainly partial) of the fact that the progressive rise of the star of Michelangelo – in parallel with the theory of the super-man and the Romantic exaltation of the individual – was matched by the decline of that of Giambologna and his entourage. The Flemish artist in fact arrived in Florence in 1556, when Michelangelo was well advanced in years and had long been absent from his native city; very soon he came to represent the alternative to the school of Michelangelo, in terms both of the concept of the figure of the artist and his relationship with matter, and also in terms of the times and modes of the creative act.

In the search for possible explanations for the recent critical neglect of Tacca, of Susini, and of Francavilla, we cannot overlook either the undeniable difficulty that a technique such as that of bronze casting creates in the attribution of the paternity of the work. Here I am not alluding solely to the difficulty of attributing to one or other artist the physical paternity of the model or the specific casting, but also and possibly more significantly, to the doubts regarding the conceptual authorship, or rather the artistic paternity in an eminently theoretical sense, of an object produced in numerous exemplars from existing forms with imperceptible variations entrusted to the moment of finishing. These are issues that have been addressed with fairly diverse approaches in line with the varying sensibility of the epoch. It is in fact patently clear that over time the relation between the model and the replicas derived from the same has assumed an extremely divergent, if not actually opposite, significance: at the time of Giambologna, at the end of the nineteenth century and in our own times, when the reproducibility of the work of art is a concept that has become a cultural commonplace.

Considering the specific case of Tacca, we can add that he has not been helped by the decision to devote, with an obsession which towards the end of his life became almost maniacal, most of his time and energies to the design and the technical realisation of enormous monuments in bronze, with all the implicit problems of casting, assembly and statics. This naturally affected his production in terms of quantity, with the inevitable repercussions as regards diffusion among his contemporaries at the time, and later in museums and collections.

Moreover, the fact that he lived and worked (albeit with functions and roles of an ever increasing autonomy) within a structure that had emerged beneath the expansive wing of a figure of outstanding stature who was also an able communicator of his own image, such as Giambologna, undoubtedly overshadowed the emergence of his own individuality, at times sublimated to the indiscriminate label of the workshop.

In the specific sector of the crucifixes the situation appears to be further complicated by the presence and the work of Pietro’s son, Ferdinando, who took over from him in the workshop of Borgo Pinti. Here he was able to exploit and utilise the forms left by his father, sometimes just as they were, and at others making the minor or not so minor modifications that the technique permitted at the end of the processing phase, working both with bronze and with papier-mâché. Because, despite having been born in the land of the marble quarries and hence of sculpted statuary, Tacca always favoured the casting technique, not only for the works that were more demanding, even in economic terms, created using noble metals such as silver or bronze (which he treated masterfully in the most diverse manner: left in the natural state, highlighted with gold or heat-gilded), but even for the more “humble” crucifixes which are never carved in wood, but first modelled in wax or clay and then produced by moulding the papier-mâché inside the masterform.

The exhibition set up in Carrara in the renovated areas of the ancient convent of San Francesco is therefore intended to fill a very obvious gap which is strongly felt both in specialist circles and as regards the knowledge of the general public.

It has, moreover, evolved and is now being presented at a particularly fortuitous moment. The recent exhibition on Giambologna, which we mentioned above, and the significant accompanying research has created a solid and crucial precedent that has facilitated our work enormously, in that it has offered us a terrain that has already been meticulously prepared and explored in terms of precedents and context.

These prerequisites have thus streamlined the exhibition’s pursuit of its objective: to delineate, within the more general context of the epoch, the characteristic features of this youth from a borderland region, such as Carrara was at the time, divided between Lucca and the capital, who moved to the city and flung himself into an adventure of far-reaching reverberations that gave him the chance of achieving his ambitions. In short, in Carrara it has been possible to grasp the extraordinary opportunity of devoting ourselves exclusively to Pietro Tacca, paying particular attention to those spheres of his activity which are less closely linked to the preponderant presence of his master: the exaltation of the glory of earthly power, through the great celebratory monuments, and the devotional sensibility. From a political angle, such themes tie up with the formation of the modern sovereign states, and from a religious angle with the effects of the Counter-Reformation on the iconography of the Crucifix. Consequently, they illustrate how Tacca was not only profoundly conscious of, but also directly and personally involved in the most pressing changes in the society in which he lived and worked.

This is why it was incumbent on us to retrieve the personal contribution made by Pietro Tacca to the history of art, casting light above all on his distancing from the models of Giambologna in his creation of types of Christ on the Cross and the Sovereign on horseback that were distinctly novel, and which served as a yardstick for several generations of artists after him, as is clearly illustrated in the essays on these arguments presented in this catalogue.

This is not a question of the mere elaboration of new formal solutions or the achievement of exceptional technical expertise: the figure of Tacca, more clearly illuminated in its mutable and at times contradictory aspects, finally brings forth all that extraordinary complexity which made him a cornerstone in the historic evolution from the Florentine Renaissance to the Roman Baroque.

More specifically, if we make a direct comparison of the equestrian monument to Cosimo I, a prime model for his youthful training, with the monument to Philip IV, his ultimate artistic achievement, we cannot fail to discern the vast distance that exists between master and pupil, in the sense of novelty and modernity. Similarly, we cannot fail to appreciate the sensitive attention with which Tacca has rendered, through warm and gleaming bronze, through a surface worked with the intricate subtlety of a goldsmith, the emphatic theatricality of a sovereign, of a dynasty, of an entire new historic era.

There are further cues that can help us to understand the role of Tacca as a pivot between two worlds and two cultures, which we feel ought to be acknowledged. For example, it is undeniable that he never entirely abandons certain distinctly Florentine elements of Mannerist eclecticism. Both his iconographic repertory – even when referring to entirely new subjects – and the pure modality of his approach to form, draw very frequently on sources referable to the great Florentine masters, tracing an uninterrupted line which leads from Donatello to Michelangelo, to Cellini and again to Buontalenti. Despite this, and at the same time, his approach appears to be emblematic of the role which Giambologna and the Medici wished to attribute to the arts as a language that was by now strictly European, in the wake of international Mannerism. This is illustrated by the appreciation with which he was greeted in the great courts of France and Spain, to the celebration of which he devoted so much of his energy especially in his full and late maturity, fulfilling an experience which enabled him to carve out his own legitimate space in the most culturally advanced circles of the time.

In the final analysis, the result which I hope may be achieved by the work of research and display that is presented here is that of having made a significant contribution to a fuller comprehension of the career of Pietro Tacca: from when he set off from his father’s house as little more than a lad, up to the ultimate works, when all his efforts were strained towards a result that was fully modern, capable of transforming the lenticular naturalism of Ligozzi into the psychological naturalism of the seventeenth century, and of liberating in movement the serpentine line, as concluded sign, as an affirmation of the conquest of free space.

The design and the subsequent organisation of the exhibition encountered no few difficulties of a practical nature.

Effectively, Tacca was not a small-scale sculptor, and many of his large or vast sculptures are effectively immovable. A correctly priority attention to the protection and safeguarding of the works has thus led us to renounce some works which could plausibly have been dismantled and set up at the exhibition, but not without strain and risk. Moreover, the large monuments are characterised by a relationship with the surrounding space, and in certain cases even with the architecture that houses them, such as to advise against isolating them in a necessarily uncharacterised display area or, still worse, in a space with different connotations. The result of this could be a considerable loss of certain aspects of the significance of the work; typical and almost inevitable, for example, is the loss of the sense of proportion, which is dramatically altered when an article is transferred from an open space into closed premises.

A further obstacle to obtaining certain loans was the intensely devotional nature of the Crucifixes, objects that are frequently at the core of an ancient and deep-seated spiritual ritual. It is sometimes difficult for the religious communities to comprehend their historic and artistic value, and even harder for them to separate the two aspects and permit them to co-exist harmoniously.

These inevitable limitations, which clearly do not affect the catalogue, have meant that considerable space has been devoted to multimedia supports and the illustration of the exhibition. Again as a result of the impossibility of creating a continuous and complete itinerary, the display is not arranged in the chronological order of a traditional retrospective exhibition, but features instead an approach of a critical slant.

Consequently, it opens with a first section dealing with the “symbolic monuments” of Pietro Tacca, those for which his work is known and present throughout the world: the Monument of the Four Moors in Livorno and, in Florence, the Porcellino and the two fountains in Piazza Santissima Annunziata.

Through such exemplars another and different theme indispensable for a full understanding of the personality of the artist is tackled: the naturalism and natural curiosity, at times verging on the grotesque, which was so popular among sovereigns all over Europe, bringing together seventeenth-century experimentation with the old Mannerist taste for the eccentric and the monstrous. Undoubtedly crucial to an understanding of Tacca’s level of quality is the revocation – through several drawings and the precious plaster model, of the complex Monument to Ferdinando I in the port of Livorno, and more specifically the figures of the Four Slaves, where the modelling of the nude in bronze achieves a tactile sensibility which is possibly the closest that any Tuscan artist has ever come to Bernini, from this aspect.

Following, in the second display area, are various iconographic illustrations, chosen from among the most pertinent, of the protagonists of Tacca’s Florence: the Medici as favoured commissioners and Giambologna as unrivalled master. Also referring to the Medici is the large sepulchral pantheon, the Chapel of the Princes annexed to the Basilica of San Lorenzo, for the decoration of which Tacca was called on to provide the two bronze statues of Ferdinando I and Cosimo II. In these superb portraits, and in particular in that of Cosimo, the detail of the subtle passage of light over the finely chiselled surfaces enhances the sumptuous richness of the heavily arabesqued garments, while the disproportionately small head, thin and tense, combined with the convulsive gesture of the left hand, reverberate with the most profound inner disquietude. These reveal Tacca’s consummate technical skill and surprising introspective capacities, which help us to construct a more complete picture of him beyond the stereotype of the court artist.

The third section of the exhibition is then devoted to the major enterprises of the equestrian monuments, documented by preparatory drawings or others taken from the completed work, as well as small bronzes and paintings, both by Tacca himself and by other great contemporary artists, such as Stefano della Bella, Ludovico Cigoli and Susini.

Finally, the fourth and last section illustrates Tacca’s production in the sphere of religious art, offering a selection of his finest Crucifixes and liturgical furnishings. This will bring us to focus more intently on the stimulating fulcrum of the complex organisational structure of the Grand Ducal workshops, where the sculptors frequently worked in close contact with goldsmiths and engravers, if not actually penetrating their realm, in line with a concept of the artist of a ductile and multi-faceted genius which, despite having its specific roots in Leonardo, was also destined to an enduring fortune.

The searching analysis of the crucifixes is also aimed at delineating with greater clarity the dividing line between the type desired and elaborated first by Giambologna and later by Ferdinando Tacca, so as to place Pietro finally in a very precise position and cast light on the specificity of his own character and of his eminently personal creativity.