Pietro Tacca

Pietro Tacca (16 September 1577 – 26 October 1640) was an Italian sculptor, who was the chief pupil and follower of Giambologna. Tacca began in a Mannerist style and worked in the Baroque style during his maturity.

Born in Carrara, Tuscany, he joined Giambologna's atelier in 1592. Tacca took over the workshop of his master on the elder sculptor's death in 1608, finishing a number of Giambologna's incomplete projects, and succeeding him almost immediately as court sculptor to the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Like his master he took full advantage of the fashion among connoisseurs for table-top reductions of fine bronze sculptures. Louis XIV possessed Giambolognesque bronzes of Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar ([3] and Heracles and the Cerynian Stag [4] (now Louvre Museum) that are now attributed to Tacca, and dated to the 1620s. [5].

Tacca began by finishing Giambologna's equestrian bronze of Ferdinand de' Medici for the Piazza della SS. Annunziata, a project in which he had participated at every stage, from the terracotta models to the casting process in the fall of 1602 and the finishing (by 1608). This work was cast with the bronze from the cannons of captured Barbary and Ottoman galleys, taken by the Order of Saint Stephen, of which the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici was Grand Master.

Tacca's public works for the Medici include his masterpieces, the "Monument of the Four Moors", representing captured Barbary corsairs or Ottoman pirates (1620–24) at the foot of Baccio Bandinelli's statue of Ferdinand I de' Medici, intended to celebrate the above-mentioned victories, in Piazza della Darsena, Livorno. Reduced scale bronze adaptations were made by Foggini and these were to be the basis of reproductions for connoisseurs into the 18th century. Ceramic versions were made by Doccia and other manufacturers. One of Tacca's disciples, Taddeo di Michele, executed a trophy of Barbary arms accompanying the prisoners; it was looted by French troops in 1799 and is now in the Louvre Museum.

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