The Wild Boar, Porcellino

myminifactory

Il Porcellino, or "Piglet," is the local Florentine nickname for a bronze fountain featuring a boar, from which this plaster copy was cast. The original fountain figure was sculpted and cast by Baroque master Pietro Tacca shortly before 1643, following an Italian marble copy of a Hellenistic marble original in the Grand Ducal collections at the time, now displayed in the Uffizi Museum's classical section. This original, discovered in Rome and relocated to Florence mid-16th century by the Medici family, was linked from its discovery with the Calydonian Boar of Greek Myth. Visitors to Il Porcellino deposit a coin into the boar's open jaws, aiming for it to fall through the underlying grating for good luck; they also rub the boar's snout to ensure a return to Florence, a tradition noted by Scottish literary traveler Tobias Smollett in 1766, which has preserved the snout's polished sheen while leaving the rest of the boar's body a dull brownish-green patina.