About This Artwork

Ferdinando Tacca
Italian, 1619-1686

Bireno and Olimpia, 1640/50

Bronze, traces of red-gold lacquer
14 7/8 x 15 11/16 in. (37.9 x 39.9 cm)
Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment; through prior gift of The George F. Harding Collection, 1993.348

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Museum, "Giambologna, 1529–1608: Sculptor to the Medici," 19 August - 10 September 1978, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 5 October – 16 November 1978, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2 December 1978 – 28 January 1979, no. 73.

Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, "Il Seicento Fiorentino: arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III," 21 December 1986 – 4 May 1987, no. 4.37.

Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, "The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence," 6 June – 29 September 2002, Art Institute of Chicago, 9 November 2002 – 2 February 2003, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, 16 March – 8 June 2003, no. 87.

Publication History

Anthony Radcliffe, “Ferdinando Tacca, the Missing Link in Florentine Baroque Bronzes,” Kunst des Barock in der Toskana (Munich: Bruckmann, 1976), pp. 14-23.

Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe, eds., Giambologna, 1529–1608: Sculptor to the Medici (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978), p. 121, no. 73.

Il Seicento Fiorentino: arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III 1 (Palazzo Strozzi, 1986), no. 4.37.

Charles Avery, Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture (New York: Moyer Bell Limited, 1987), p. 230, fig. 264.

Ian Wardropper, “Collecting European Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago,” Apollo 154, 475 (September 2001), pp. 4-5, 12 (ill.).

Bruce Boucher, “Bireno and Olimpia,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 29, 2 (2003), pp. 60-61 (ill.).

Ownership History

Daniel Katz, London, from 1969 [according to notes from phone conversation with Katz in curatorial file]. Plato Investments, Limited, Zurich, by 1993; sold to the Art Institute through Daniel Katz, Limited, London, 1993.