Bellowing Bull

Entry

Judging by the various known replicas, this imposing bronze bull once enjoyed a certain renown. Besides the twelve bulls based on this model recognized up to now,¹¹ an exquisite Louis XVI socle in Avignon must be added to this group.¹² The Amsterdam cast originates from the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, where it was deaccessioned in 1923 as a doublet.

The model of the present bronze was initially linked to Giambologna (1529-1608) or an artist from his circle. Weihrauch, by contrast, rightly placed the bull in the circle of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).¹³ The beast’s full, ‘painterly’ modelling with its thickly furrowed body is indeed reminiscent of cattle appearing in a number of Rubens’s works with rural themes painted around 1620, e.g. The Farm (Buckingham Palace, London), Landscape with Cows (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), The Rainbow Landscape (Wallace Collection, London) or The Prodigal Son (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Antwerp). The presence of a gilt-bronze cast of a bull in Cornelis de Baellieur’s (1607-1677) painted rendering of Rubens’s supposed atelier (Palazzo Pitti, Florence) lends extra support to Weihrauch’s attribution.¹⁴

Theuerkauff examined the possibility that the maker of the bull was the Antwerp sculptor Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668), but did not find sufficient grounds for this attribution.¹⁵ Nevertheless, his suggestion merits consideration. Quellinus’s style clearly displays influences emanating from Rubens’s Baroque, even after his return from Italy in 1639. The stylistic similarity of several of his works to the bronze is striking, precisely when it comes to the flowing, fleshy modelling of his terracottas.¹⁶ Examples of this include a Lioness Suckling her Cubs in the Leiden Collection in New York (fig. a).¹⁷ Also noteworthy is the evident agreement in head type when comparing the present bronze to that of a steer on Quellinus’s marble relief entitled Mercury and Argus in the former town hall of Amsterdam.¹⁸

Thematically, the bull can be readily linked to the sculptor’s existing oeuvre, which includes a small number of lively, naturalistically modelled freestanding animal figures in terracotta. In its dimensions and pose, the bronze is very similar to a signed terracotta horse by Quellinus, which bears the year 1638 (fig. b).¹⁹ The gilt-bronze cast of this model that appears in Cornelis de Baellieur’s painting forms its counterpart, supporting the notion that Quellinus conceived them as a pair.²⁰ One discrepancy must be noted, however, specifically with respect to the number of surviving casts of the bull (at least thirteen versions) versus the horse (zero). This suggests that casts of the bull were also made as autonomous works.

The oval, integrally cast base plates discernible beneath the present bull’s hooves are a technical distinction encountered on several of the sculptures assigned to this group. Simple in form, similar plates can also be observed on other bronzes produced north of the Alps, including a number of works by Willem van Tetrode (cf. BK-1959-3), Georg Petel’s Three Graces after Rubens, and an elephant from Augsburg.²¹

The execution of a bull in bronze – hardly an elevated subject – in fact reflects the growing predilection for the low-life genre that first emerged in collectors’ circles in the second half of the sixteenth century, a development parallel to the far more evident popularity of peasant scenes in Flemish painting of the same period.

Its motivation is to be understood in terms of the artist’s desire for humoristic effect achieved through a kind of reversal of values: taking a trivial subject and expressing it in a costly and exalted medium like bronze. The bronze bull described in Cesare Ripa’s famous Iconologia, interpreted as a symbol of the concept Idolatria (Idolatry), is perhaps an overly zealous connotation when discussing a work of Flemish sculpture. Implicitly, however, the bronze possibly alludes to a number of now lost bronze bulls dating back to classical Antiquity. Pliny, for example, speaks of the bronze ox on the Cattle Market in ancient Rome, taken from the island of Delos by the Romans as war loot. Another example is a bronze heifer by the Roman sculptor Myron (Pliny 34:10 and 34:57), of which a Roman marble copy is today preserved in the Sala degli Animali in the Vatican. Like the present bull, the beast is depicted making the bellowing sound of a bull. Even if never seen by Quellinus himself – this specific marble copy was unearthed only after his death²² – another now lost copy of Myron’s heifer may have existed in the artist’s day from which he drew his inspiration.

The bull’s rather ungainly corporeal form – not to mention his bellowing emission – likewise contributes to the amusing aspect of Quellinus’s version, in marked contrast to the grandiosity of Giambologna’s bulls. Yet it is precisely such details, like the suggestion of sound – action in stillness – that greatly enhances the work’s expression. The bull’s open mouth has nothing to do with a water fountain spout;²³ its significance lies instead in its subtle reference to Antiquity. Pliny writes of the sculptor Perillus, who made a hollow bronze bull that was said to bellow, when a man was enclosed in its belly and a fire lit below (Pliny 34:89). Perhaps Quellinus’s bull signifies the artist’s attempt to rival the beast of Perillus?

Frits Scholten, 2024
This entry was originally published in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 43