Phalaris and the Bull of Perillus

1590/1600

Attributed to Giovanni Caccini (Italian, 1556-1612)

This classical subject tells the cautionary tale of the sculptor Perillus, who offered to make a bronze bull in which the tyrant Phalaris could roast his enemies. Perillus was rewarded by being the contraption’s first victim. In the Renaissance, this story was interpreted as a moral fable of how bad advice rebounds on the giver, and it is here presented against the backdrop of a large Renaissance piazza. The relief is attributed to Giovanni Caccini on the basis of its stylistic relationship to his best-known work, the bronze panes of the doors of Pisa Cathedral (1604).

Status: On View, Gallery 206
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Giovanni Battista Caccini
Title: Phalaris and the Bull of Perillus
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1590–1600
Medium: Terracotta with traces of polychromy
Dimensions: 68.6 × 87.6 cm (27 × 34 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Kate S. Buckingham Endowment
Reference Number: 1968.316
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/29431/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report 1968-69, p. 16.
Charles Avery, “The Bull of Perillus: A Relief attributed to Giovanni Caccini,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 6 (1971), pp. 22-33.

Artibus, Geneva, before 1968 [according to Commission Book, 1968–69, Heim Gallery Records, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, copy in curatorial file]; Heim Gallery, London, by 1968; sold to the Art Institute, 1968.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.