Sitting lion

Description

The son of Francesco Ferrucci (formerly Vasari's collaborator in the courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio) Romolo, who had worked on the audience wall in 1591 (Allegri/Cecchi), is recalled by Baldinucci: "a disciple of Andrea Ferrucci (also a sculptor in Boboli), .... much distinguished himself in sculpting in stone all sorts of quadrupedal animals whereby the Most Serene Dukes of Tuscany made great capital of his virtue, by means of which no small amenity and vagueness accreted to the Boboli garden, in various parts of which were situated lions, tigers, wolves, nightingales and other beasts, where crouching as in a place of their retreat among the shadows of the salvatichi ... perfect imitation of animals of this kind, and to the expressiveness of 1or gestures, and of their motions, and beginning in what touches the variety, proportion and quickness of their muscles, we cannot see who else until" his time has done more or better" . Baldinucci again informs us that there was a "vague concept" in the arrangement of the animals in the guise of a hunting theater arranged under the ragnaia. However, in the text of1 Cambia gi (1757), the various animals (the tigers are currently no longer in the garden) are found arranged for ornamental use in Madama's little garden, around the fishpond, at the entrance to the Isolotto avenues and at the entrance to the now-destroyed 'Labyrinth' of greenery. Most of the sculptures missing from it, were probably dispersed as a result of the Leopoldine rearrangement of the Garden, since they are still remembered by Soldini in 1789 in the places mentioned above. In 1758 the animals were 'restored', but perhaps almost remade as it turns out for other heavily eroded sculptures in the garden, by the Englishman Jansen on behalf of Pietro Leopoldo (Roani)