Pietro Tacca (Carrara marble, 1577 - Florence, 1640), is an Italian sculptor of the school florentine, best representing Tuscan style Baroque.

It had like pupils Bartolommeo Cennini, Francesco Maria Bandini, and its son Ferdinando Tacca.

Biography

At its fifteen years, in 1592, it enters the workshop of Giambologna the most important sculptor of the time to Florence and he becomes its first assistant after the departure of Pietro Francavilla for Paris in 1601. With died from the Master in 1608, it receives in usufruct the workshop and the house of the Pinti borough. One year later, he becomes appointed sculptor of the large-duke of Tuscany.

He completes some started but unfinished work of his Master, like the equestrian statue of Ferdinand ler of Médicis for the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, that of the king Henri IV of France, ordered by Marie de Médicis for the Pont-Neuf of Paris (destroyed during the revolution in 1793), and that of Philippe III of Spain, still placed today in the plaza Mayor of Madrid (1616). Between 1626 and 1642, it also finishes the bronze statues gilded of the large-dukes Ferdinand Ier and Cosme II, which surmount their respective sarcophagi in the vault of Princes de Florence, Cappella dei Principi of San Lorenzo.

Between 1620 and 1623 it carries out what is regarded as its masterpiece: the I Quattro mori incatenati (literally four connected Moors called also four connected slaves ) on the basis of monument with Ferdinand de Médicis on the piazzetta beyond darsena with Leghorn. The statues represent pirates sarrazins made captive by the Order of the Knights of Saint-Stephan, created by Cosme Ier, the father of Ferdinand. The sculptor would have chosen as model some slaves captive of the prisons which moored in the port close to Leghorn.

The two fountains bronzes some (1629) which, today decorate the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata , at the origin, were intended for Leghorn; they are characteristic of the passage of the Maniérisme to the baroque.

Always in Florence, by copying a marble hellenistic now preserved at the Uffizi, it realizes celebrates it fountain known as Fontana del Porcellino (1630) which went to decorate then the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo (loggia of the new market) and replaced today by a copy (original with the Palais Pitti).

Between 1626 and 1642, it carries out the statues of the large-dukes Ferdinand Ier and Cosme II for their respective cenotaphs in the vault of the Princes.

Become very famous for its bronze works, it carries out many statues and a series of crucifix for various churches, in which his/her Ferdinando son collaborates, who also chose the career of sculptor but will specialize in the decorations of festivals and the machines.

Its last company is the imposing equestrian monument with Philippe IV of Spain on the place of the East, to which he works of 1634 until his death in 1640. This monument is the first equestrian statue with a pulled up horse, statue resting against the two back legs and the tail. Shortly after that this statue was embarked for Madrid, he dies and is buried in the basilica Santissima Annunziata .

Other works

• Statues of evangelists to the basilica Santissima Annunziata
• Buste of SAINT LAURENT out of coloured wax, technical in which he was specialist with San Lorenzo in Florence
• Hercules and the wild boar in Erymanthe bronzes with the Musée of Louvre (1600-1630)
• Hercules and the stag bronzes with the museum of Louvre (1600-1620)
• Hercules and the hind
• Buste of Giambologna bronzes and marble, (1529-1608)
• a bust out of bronze with Barberino Val of Elsa, with the palate of the place Barberini
• the preparatory drawing of the major furnace bridge Badia Fiesolana which will be carried out in 1610 by Giovan Battista Cennini

Homages

• In front of the Carrara marble palate, monument with Pietro Tacca of Carlo Fontana
• In Aix-en-Provence, on the Richelme place, a counterpart of its Wild boar, since the years 1980.
• From May 5th, 2007 to August 19th, 2007, exposure to the Museo della Scultura of Carrara marble (old convent San Francesco)

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