Fancelli's ancient lion

Vacca's lion

The Medici lions are a pair of marble sculptures of lions: one of which is Roman, dating to the 2nd century AD, and the other a 16th-century pendant. Both were by 1598^[1] placed at the Villa Medici, Rome. Since 1789 they have been displayed at the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. The sculptures depict standing male lions with a sphere or ball under one paw, looking to the side.

Copies of the Medici lions have been made and publicly installed in over 30 other locations, and smaller versions made in a variety of media; Medici lion has become the term for the type.

The Albani lion, a similar ancient sculpture, now at the Louvre

A similar Roman lion sculpture, of the 1st century AD, is known as the Albani lion, and is now in the Louvre. Here, the stone used for the ball is different from the basalt body. Both may derive from a Hellenistic original.^[2]

History

A pair of lions were required by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had acquired the Villa Medici in 1576, to serve as majestic ornaments for the villa's garden staircase, the Loggia dei leoni. The first lion originates from a 2nd-century^[3] marble that was first mentioned in 1594, by the sculptor Flaminio Vacca,^[4] by which time it was already in the collection of Ferdinando;^[5] Vacca reported that it had been found in the via Prenestina, outside Porta San Lorenzo. According to Vacca, the lion had been a relief, which was carved free of its background and reworked by "Giovanni Sciarano" or Giovanni di Scherano Fancelli, of whom little is now known.^[6]

The second was made and signed^[7] by Vacca, also in marble, as a pendant to the ancient sculpture at a date variously reported as between 1594 and 1598^[3] or between 1570 and 1590.^[8][9] The pair were in place at the Loggia dei Leoni in 1598^[1] The pendant was made from a capital that had come from the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.^[9]

The Villa Medici was inherited by the house of Lorraine in 1737, and in 1787^[3][10][11] the lions were moved to Florence, and since 1789^[10] they flank the steps to the Loggia dei Lanzi at the Piazza della Signoria.

The sculptures were replaced by copies at the Villa Medici when Napoleon relocated the French Academy in Rome to the villa in 1803.^[12] These copies were made by the French sculptor Augustin Pajou.^[11]

• 
  The original Medici lions at the Villa Medici (Giovanni Francesco Venturini 1691)
• 
  The current Medici Lions at the Villa Medici in Rome
• 
  Medici Lion by Augustin Pajou at the Villa Medici
• 
  The Medici coat of arms with five balls, above Loggia dei leoni

Copies

Study of one of the Medici Lions by Giuseppe Bernardino Bison (1762–1844)

The original Medici lions (1598) have since 1789 stood in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza della Signoria, Florence. There is a smaller bronze left-looking sculpture attributed to Italian sculptor Pietro da Barga^[13] and the same period.^[8] Later copies or replicas include (ordered by first year):

Spain

• Twelve sculptures in bronze by Matteo Bonucelli da Lucca, commissioned in Rome by Velázquez for the Room of Mirrors at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid (1651):
  • Four sculptures are now in the throne room in the Royal Palace of Madrid (since 1764).^[14]
  • Eight sculptures are now in the Museo del Prado, of which four support the tabletop of Rodrigo Calderón.^[14][15]
• Sculptures in Colmenar marble at the Montforte Gardens, Valencia by José Bellver (circa 1860).^[16][17]
• Sculptures in marble at the Canalejas Park, Alicante (park created 1886).

Staffordshire figure of a Medici lion, enamels on Lead-glazed earthenware, circa 1820.

Russia and Ukraine

Versions in Saint Petersburg, Russia include:

• The Lion Cascade in bronze at Peterhof Palace (1799–1801).
• Sculptures in marble at the Lobanov-Rostovsky Residence (constructed 1817–20).^[27][28]
• Sculptures in bronze at the staircase of the Mikhailovsky Palace (constructed 1819–25).^[29]
• Sculptures at the entrance of Yelagin Palace (completed 1822).
• The Lions at the Dvortsovaya pier in bronze at the Admiralty embankment (1832).
• Sculptures at the pier on the western point of Yelagin Island (1926).^[30]

Versions in southern Russia and later Ukraine include:

• Sculptures in marble at the Vorontsov Palace, Odessa (now Ukraine, completed 1830).
• One pair of marble lion sculptures at the Voronstov Palace, Crimea (installed in 1848).^[31]
• Pair of lion sculptures at Starosinnyi Garden, Odessa (now Ukraine, unknown year).^[32]
• Lion sculpture at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine Botanical Garden.^[33]

Vytautas the Great War Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania

United States

The newly re-installed lions at the western end of the Bridge of Lions, in St. Augustine, Florida. Donated by Andrew Anderson

• The Florentine Lions in cast-iron in the Fairmount Park, Philadelphia (cast in 1849 at the Alexandroffsky Head Mechanical Works, St Petersburg, Russia for Andrew M. Eastwick, originally displayed at Bartram's Garden, 1851–1879, installed at west Fairmount Park in 1887).^[35]
• Medici Lions, at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bowdoin College, Maine. The Museum’s landmark Walker Art Building was commissioned for the College by Harriet and Sophia Walker in honor of their uncle, a Boston businessman who had supported the creation of the first small art gallery at Bowdoin in the mid-nineteenth century. Designed by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead, & White, the building was completed in 1894 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.^[36][37]
• Stone sculptures, Mick and Mack, at McMicken Hall, The University of Cincinnati, Ohio (there since 1904). The pair of lions originally belonged to Jacob Hoffner, a wealthy Cincinnati landowner who bequeathed them to the University upon his death in 1891. They were transported to their current location in 1904.^[38]
• The pair of lions on the western end of the eponymous Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, Florida (constructed 1925–1927, rebuilt 2011–2012).^[39]
• Sculpture in limestone at the Museum of Outdoor Arts, Colorado (founded 1981).^[40]

Close imitations

Slottslejonen at the Royal Palace, Stockholm

• Sweden: Slottslejonen (Swedish for The Palace Lions) in bronze, by Bernard Foucquet at the Royal Palace, Stockholm (1700–1704).
• United Kingdom: Sculptures in bronze at the Queen's Gate entrance to Royal Victoria Park in Bath (1818–1819).^[45]
• Belgium: Lion of Waterloo in iron, by Jean-François Van Geel in Waterloo (1826).
• India: Fitzgerald Bridge statue in Pune, India (1866).
• Spain: The Leones del Congreso: Daoiz y Velarde in bronze at the Congress of Deputies, Madrid, Cast in 1865, installed 1872.^[46]
• Finland: Parolan Leijona (Finnish for The Lion of Parola) on a four-meter-high (13 ft) pedestal in Hattula. Erected in 1868 to commemorate the 1863 visit by Alexander II of Russia.^[47]
• Barbados: The Lion at Gun Hill carved from a single piece of coral stone in 1868 by Captain Henry John Wilkinson, who was stationed there. It is situated southeast and below the Gun Hill Signal Station, overlooking the St. George Valley.^{[48] [49]}

In popular culture

Downsized copies of the Medici lions are on display in the garden of the Corleone family estate in The Godfather (1972).

See also

• Marzocco (the heraldic symbol of Florence)
• The Albani lion (the 1st century Roman lion with a sphere)
• Cultural depictions of lions
• Chinese guardian lions

Notes

References

• Flaminio Vacca, di varie antichità trovate in diversi luoghi della città di Roma, not published until 1790 (noted by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: the lure of classical sculpture, 1500–1900 1981).
• Michel Hochmann: Villa Medici, il sogno di un Cardinale – Collezioni e artisti di Ferdinando de' Medici, De Luca, 1999, p. 208–11, nos. 37–40, illus. pp. 209–11
• Roberto Manescalchi Il Marzocco / The lion of Florence. In collaborazione con Maria Carchio, Alessandro del Meglio, English summary by Gianna Crescioli. Grafica European Center of Fine Arts e Assessorato allo sport e tempo libero, Valorizzazioni tradizioni fiorentine, Toponomastica, Relazioni internazionale e gemellaggi del comune di Firenze, novembre, 2005.

External links

• Media related to Medici lions at Wikimedia Commons
• 3D model of a Medici lion

43°46′9.13″N 11°15′20.37″E / 43.7692028°N 11.2556583°E / 43.7692028; 11.2556583