Phalaris and the Bull of Perillus

Description

This classical subject tells the cautionary tale of the sculptor Perillus, who offered to make a bronze bull in which the tyrant Phalaris could roast his enemies. Perillus was rewarded by being the contraption’s first victim. In the Renaissance this story was interpreted as a moral fable of how bad advice rebounds on the giver, and it is here presented against the backdrop of a large, contemporary piazza. The relief is attributed to Giovanni Caccini on the basis of its stylistic relationship to his best-known work, the bronze panes of the doors of Pisa Cathedral.

Provenance

Artibus, Geneva, before 1968 [according to Commission Book, 1968–69, Heim Gallery Records, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, copy in curatorial file]; Heim Gallery, London, by 1968; sold to the Art Institute, 1968.

Phalaris and the Bull of Perillus

Giovanni Battista Caccini

1590–1600

Accession Number

29431

Medium

Terracotta with traces of polychromy

Dimensions

68.6 × 87.6 cm (27 × 34 1/2 in.)

Classification

relief

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Kate S. Buckingham Endowment