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BETWEEN TRADITION AND SUPERSTITION IN ITALIAN ART

BETWEEN TRADITION AND SUPERSTITION IN ITALIAN ART. LA FONTANA DEL PORCELLINO Florence.

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BETWEEN TRADITION AND SUPERSTITION IN ITALIAN ART

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  1. BETWEEN TRADITION AND SUPERSTITION IN ITALIAN ART

  2. LA FONTANA DEL PORCELLINOFlorence Il Porcellino (Italian «piglet») is the local Florentine nickname for the bronze fountain of a wild boar. The fountain figure was sculpted and cast by Baroque master Pietro Tacca (1577-1640) shortly before 1634, following a marble Italian copy of Hellenistic marble original, at the time in the Greand Ducal collections and today on display in the classical section of Museo degli Uffizi (Uffizi Museum). The original, found in Rome and removed to Florence in the mid 16th century by the powerfull family of the Medici, was associated from the time of its rediscovery with the Calydonian of Greek myth.

  3. Tacca’s bronze was originally intended for the Boboli Garden (the garden of Palazzo Pitti), then moved to the Mercato Nouvo in Florence. The fountain was originally placed facing east, but to gain more space for market traffic it was later moved to the side facing south, where it still stands as one of the most popular features for tourists. The present statue is a modern copy, cast in 1998 by Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry and replaced in 2008, while Tacca’s bronze is sheltered in the new Museo Stefano Bardini in Palazzo Mozzi. Il Porcellino is very polular also among writers, in fact it figures in Hans Christian Andersen’s «The Bronze Hog» in A Poet’s Bazaar.

  4. Visitors to Il Porcellino put a coin into the boar’s gaping jaws, with the intent to let it fall through the underlying grating for good luck, and they rub the boar’s snout to ensure to return to Florence, a tradition that the Scottish literary traveller Tobias Smollet already noted in 1766 who noted the difference between the boar’s polish sheen snout and the dull brownish-green of the body.

  5. THE TWO-TAIL LIZARDPISA On the central bronze door of the Cathedral of Pisa there is a relief sculpture of a two-tail lizard. This tiny reptile seems to bring good luck to those who touch its tails as it is a symbol of abundance, wealth…so of good luck!!!

  6. For this reason, 100 days before the beginning of the final exam (Esame di Stato) of the last year of Upper Secondary School, in order either to pass it or to get good results, hundreds and hundreds of students reach the city of Pisa from all over the country just to see and take a picture of the lizard; in fact it is forbidden now to actually touch the bronze relief sculpture in order to preserve it, so that very day it is protected by crush barriers. Anyway for Italian students, and especially for those from Tuscany this day is an occasion to skip school and spend a day having fun doing 100 different things!!!

  7. The bull of Milan In the center of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, designed by the architect Giuseppe Mengoni and inaugurated around 1860, there is a mosaic representing a Bull, the symbol of the city of Turin. This animal symbolises strength, vigour, energy and power

  8. The tradition says that putting one’s right foot on the bull’s testicoles and making a 360° turn on the heel with eyes wide shut brings good luck. For this reason hundreds of tourists gather around the spot to do that every day…but it seems to work only if you do that on December 31st at midnight!!!

  9. School year 2016/2017Classe secondaliceo artisticoGiosuè CarducciVolterra

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