Pietro Tacca's Quattro Mori and the Conditions of Slavery in Early Seicento Tuscany

Abstract

Sculptural images of bound captives at the foot of a triumphant victor date back to antiquity, yet the portraitlike depictions of slaves in Pietro Tacca's Quattro Mori in Livorno (1622–26) were unique in transcending their iconographic roots to address contemporary social conditions in Tuscany's most important port. The development of the slave trade in Livorno and the contemporary construction of the Italian coast's most important bagno (slave prison) form the backdrop for Tacca's sympathetic and idiosyncratic treatment of these four Muslim captives.

Notes

1. Prior to the first Napoleonic invasion of 1796, Livorno belonged to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, then under the rule of Ferdinand III of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine. Along with this letter, Miollis demanded a remarkable 150,000 scudi as a settlement for war-related damages. See Henri Auréas, Un général de Napoléon: Miollis (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1961), 68–75; and Giuseppe Piombanti, Guida storica ed artistica della città e dei dintorni di Livorno, 2nd ed. (Livorno: Fabbreschi, 1903; reprint, Bologna: A. Forni, 2003), 34–35.

2. Sextius Alexandre François Miollis to the Municipio of Livorno, April 21, 1799, quoted in Piombanti, Guida storica, 432: “Un solo monumento esiste in Livorno ed è un monumento della tirannide, che insulta l’umanità. Quattro sventurati, cento volte più valorosi del feroce Ferdinando che li calpesta, incatenati al suo piedistallo, offrono, da trecento anni, spettacolo affliggente appena si mette piede sul porto. I sensi del dolore, dello sdegno, del disprezzo e dell’odio, devono, necessariamente, agitare ogni anima sensibile che ivi s’avvicini. Vendichiamo l’ingiuria fatta all’umanità. Compiacetevi, cittadini, d’ordinare che la statua della libertà sia sostituita a quella di questo mostro. Con una mano spezzi le catene dei quattro schiavi, coll’altra schiacci, colla picca, la testa a Ferdinando disteso al suolo. Salute e fratellanza. Miollis.”

3. Erika Naginski, Sculpture and Enlightenment (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2009), 25–30, 167–68; and Anne Wagner, “Outrages: Sculpture and Kingship in France after 1789,” in The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1997), 295–96, 302–3. Miollis's proposal has much in common with one put forward by Jean-Claude Simonne during the Revolution to replace the Parisian monument to Louis XIV in the Place des Victoires, a work obviously inspired by the Henri IV prototype and featuring four captive figures at the base. See Simonne, Lettre d’un citoyen à M. le président de l’Assemblée nationale sur l’enle`vement des statues de la place des Victoires (Paris: C. Volland, 1790), 5–6.

4. Jean Michel Massing, From the “Age of Discovery” to the Age of Abolition: Europe and the World Beyond, vol. 3, pt. 2 of The Image of the Black in Western Art, ed. David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 195.

5. The Henri IV group was begun by Giambologna and, after his death, completed by his Florentine assistants—the horse and rider by Pietro Tacca, the slaves below by Pietro Francavilla (often known by his Flemish name, Pierre de Francheville) and Francesco Bordoni; see nn. 92, 93 below.

6. Cesare Venturi, “Il monumento livornese detto dei ‘Quattro Mori,’” Liburni Civitas 7, no. 5 (1934): 18. The trophies are visible in images of the monument from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (such as Fig. 8).

7. Anthea Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno: Il monumento a Ferdinando I de’ Medici (Livorno: Comune di Livorno, 2008), 32; and Piombanti, Guida storica, 35–41.

8. On its restorations and the relocation of the monument, see Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 19; Giovanni Morigi, “Monumenti e bronzo sono un binomio inscindibile,” Percorsi Didattici 1 (1991): 8–15; Carlo Papini, “Relazione al Sindaco di Livorno sul restauro dei Quattro Mori opera del Tacca,” Arte e Storia 7, no. 30 (1888): 245–48; and Venturi, “Il monumento livornese,” 22–23. In addition to moving the monument closer to the harbor, the restoration campaign of 1888 replaced nearly three quarters of the stone in the original pedestal. At that time the plinth was raised by 4¾ feet (1.45 meters; the additions were made at the very bottom step and in the rectangular section just below Ferdinando's feet) and eight slabs of red Campiglia marble were inserted on the base between the slave figures, replacing lighter-colored panels from the original design.

9. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 14; Michael Cole, Ambitious Form: Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 34, 253–55.

10. See, for example, Francesco Bonaini, Memoria sopra il monumento inalzato al granduca Ferdinando I. in Livorno: Estratta dalla filza degli affari della direzione del R. Archivio Centrale di Stato in Firenze, anno 1855, e Relazione sulla presa di Bona, ed. Francesco Pera (Livorno: Raffaello Giusti, 1888); and Piombanti, Guida storica, 333–36.

11. Among the most important recent scholarship addressing the work is Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno; Jessica Mack-Andrick, Pietro Tacca: Hofbildhauer der Medici (1577–1640): Politische Funktion und Ikonographie des frühabsolutistischen Herrscherdenkmals unter den Groβherzögen Ferdinando I., Cosimo II. und Ferdinando II. (Weimar: VDG, 2005), esp. 101–66; and Steven F. Ostrow, “Pietro Tacca and His Quattro Mori: The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves,” Artibus et Historiae (forthcoming).

12. Edward Wright, Some Observations Made in Travelling through France, Italy, &c. in the Years 1720, 1721, and 1722 (London: Tho. Ward and E. Wicksteed, 1730), vol. 2, 374.

13. Stendhal, Journal, vol. 10, pt. 5 of Oeuvres complètes de Stendhal, ed. Henry Debraye and L. Royer (Paris: H. Champion, 1934), 112: “Ce la est bien peu ideal d’environner un prince de l’éternelle image de la doleur”; and Rembrandt Peale, Notes on Italy (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1831), 245. See also Ostrow, “The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves,” for further historiography. Many travelers praised the bronzes’ technical quality and expressiveness; for example, John Raymond, An Itinerary Contayning a Voyage Made through Italy in the Yeare 1646, and 1647 (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1648), 25: “Before [the harbor] stands that best of moderne Statues, the Duke Ferdinand in Marble, and the Colosses of foure slaves under him, in brasse in divers Postures, so lively represented, that if the Statuary could have fram’d a voice as well as those bodies, he might have conquerd nature.”

14. Anthea Brook, “From Borgo Pinti to Doccia: The Afterlife of Pietro Tacca's Moors for Livorno,” in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed. Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing (London: Warburg Institute–Nino Aragno Editore, 2012), 166.

15. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più illustri pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: Sansoni, 1878–1906), vol. 7, 164.

16. As the project of the Julius tomb dragged on, Michelangelo's references to servitude in his letters and poetry took on a further self-reflexive dimension and suggested a less top-down reading of the plight of the captives. See Deborah Parker, Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 98–101.

17. Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 8.

18. Piombanti, Guida storica, 12–14.

19. Cornelia Joy Danielson, “Livorno: A Study in 16th Century Town Planning in Italy” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1986), 10.

20. Piombanti, Guida storica, 19.

21. Pisa received some of the same concessions in these early edicts. It is likely that Cosimo was responding to Pope Paul III's invitation of Portuguese Jews to Ancona, the papal port on the Adriatic coast, in early 1547, although few Jews came to Livorno until the 1590s. See Danielson, “Livorno,” 10–23; Elena Fasano Guarini, “Esenzioni e immigrazione a Livorno tra sedicesimo e diciassettesimo secolo,” in Atti del convegno “Livorno e il Mediterraneo nell’età medicea” (Livorno: U. Bastogi, 1978), 57–58; Giuseppe Laras, “I marrani di Livorno e l’inquisizione,” in ibid., 84; and Piombanti, Guida storica, 19.

22. Danielson, “Livorno,” 13.

23. Ibid., 18–19; and Ryan E. Gregg, “Panorama, Power, and History: Vasari and Stradano's City Views in the Palazzo Vecchio” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2009), 265–66, 296, 363.

24. Danielson, “Livorno,” 43–44.

25. Ibid., 37; and Piombanti, Guida storica, 19–20.

26. Piombanti, Guida storica, 20–22.

27. Ibid., 20–21; Stephanie Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery in a Tolerant Frontier: Livorno's Turkish Bagno (1547–1747),” Mediaevalia 32 (2012): 274–75; and Laras, “I marrani di Livorno,” 82.

28. “A tutti voi mercanti di qualsivoglia natione levantini e ponenetini, spagnioli, portoghesi, Greci, todeschi, et Italiani, hebrei, turchi, e Mori, Armeni, Persiani, et altri saluto…” See Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 305 n. 2. Several handwritten copies of the edicts survive; see, for example, Ferdinando de’ Medici, “Livornina” manuscript, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, Philadelphia, Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image, MS ljs379, dated June 10, 1593.

29. Laras, “I marrani di Livorno,” 89.

30. Piombanti, Guida storica, 23; and Fasano Guarini, “Esenzioni e immigrazione,” 60–62.

31. Among those who served in both capacities was William Davies, a Lutheran from Hereford captured by grand-ducal galleys while traveling aboard a mixed Turkish and Christian mercantile ship departing Tunis in 1598. He may well have aided in the construction of the Livornese bagno (slave prison) itself. Davies describes the first three years of his captivity spent working “chained in a Cart like a horse, receiving more blowes than any Cart-horse in England, our diet being bread and water, and not so much Bread in three daies as we might have eaten at once, thus we were used to go fortie or fiftie Carts together, being all slaves: our lading would be Sand, or Lyme, or Bricke, or some such like, and to draw it whither the Officers appointed us, for their buildings. …” See Davies, A True Relation of the Travailes and Most Miserable Captivitie of William Davies, Barber-Surgion of London, under the Duke of Florence (London: Nicholas Bourne, 1614), chap. 4, fol. C[1]r.

32. Salvatore Bono, “Schiavi musulmani sulle galere e nei bagni d’Italia dal XVI al XIX secolo,” in Le genti del mare Mediterraneo, ed. Rosalba Ragosta, vol. 2 (Naples: Lucio Pironti, 1981), 839. There were some exceptions, however, notably Venice, where slaves (usually sub-Saharan Africans) could be sold in public, with the usual state regulations guiding the transactions; see Kate Lowe, “Visible Lives: Black Gondoliers and Other Black Africans in Renaissance Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 66 (2013): 419–21.

33. Bono, “Schiavi musulmani,” 839.

34. Ibid., 840, 846; and Robert C. Davis, “The Geography of Slaving in the Early Modern Mediterranean,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37 (2007): 62. Many slaves also went to work in some other aspect connected to the construction or maintenance of the fleet.

35. The knighthood was approved by Pope Pius IV on February 1, 1562; see Katherine Poole, “Medici Power and Tuscan Unity: The Cavalieri di Santo Stefano and Public Sculpture in Pisa and Livorno under Ferdinando I,” in A Scarlet Renaissance: Festschrift for Sarah Blake McHam, ed. A. Victor Coonin (New York: Italica Press, 2013), 239–42.

36. Ibid., 239–42; and Salvatore Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo: Cristiani e musulmani fra guerra, schiavitù e commercio (Milan: Mondadori, 1993), 45–48.

37. Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo, 192; and Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 12, 73–74.

38. Bono, “Schiavi Musulmani,” 841–42; and Vittorio Salvadorini, “Traffici con i paesi islamici e schiavi a Livorno nel XVII secolo: Problemi e suggestioni,” in Atti del convegno “Livorno e il Mediterraneo,” 221. The actual number is probably greater than indicated by the official documents (which number 6,175 in those years). Salvadorini counts 10,115 known cases of captured slaves between 1568 and 1688, with the busiest activity by far concentrated between 1600 and 1620. That more than half of the slaves captured by Tuscan ships come during the years in which the bagno was built should indicate what a significant presence they had in Livorno during those years. The major campaigns were against Bône (present-day Annaba, Algeria) in 1607 and, in 1610, a coastal fort west of Algiers referred to in the documents as “Bischeri,” about which little is known today. The siege of Bône was regularly cited by Ferdinando's court as one of Tuscany's great contemporary military triumphs. See Camillo Manfroni, “La marina militare del Granducato mediceo, Parte II,” Rivista Marittima 29 (1896): 507 n. 1.

39. Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, “Il bagno delle galere in ‘terra cristiana’: Schiavi a Livorno fra Cinque e Seicento,” Nuovi Studi Livornesi 8 (2000): 71.

40. See, for example, the account of Davies's capture in 1598 (A True Relation, chap. 3, fol. B4v): “We were all shaven both head and beard, and every man had given him a red coate, and a red cap, telling of us that the Duke had made us all Slaves, to our great woe and griefe.” He also notes that while he was at sea as a galley slave his head and beard were shaved every eight to ten days. See also Frattarelli Fischer, “Bagno delle galere,” 71.

41. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, 59.

42. Naples had as many as twenty thousand slaves at any one time in the early seventeenth century. Malta also had a larger population of slaves than Livorno. See Davis, “The Geography of Slaving,” 65; and Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 278–79, 281.

43. Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo, 111.

44. Bono, “Schiavi Musulmani,” 846.

45. Ibid., 848–49.

46. The main architect and engineer involved with its building was Alessandro Pieroni. The date construction began is not exactly clear; a model had been prepared in May 1598, but work probably did not start until 1600 or so. The bagno was built partly along the northwest bastions of Livorno Vecchia, the remains of the city before Ferdinando I's expansions. See Danielson, “Livorno,” 146–47, 150, 275; Giorgio Mandalis, “Quattro Mori e il Granduca: Per rileggere la storia di un monumento,” Erba d’Arno 99 (2005): 29; and Cesare Santus, “Il ‘Turco’ e l’inquisitore: Schiavi musulmani e processi per magia nel bagno di Livorno (XVII Secolo),” Società e Storia 133 (2011): 453–54.

47. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, 13–15, 110. In the mid-seventeenth century, there were six bagni in Algiers, nine in Tunis, and at least one large one in Tripoli, none of which survives.

48. Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo, 198.

49. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, 13.

50. Giorgio Vasari the Younger, La città ideale: Piante di chiese (palazzi e ville) di Toscana e d’Italia, ed. Virginia Stefanelli (Rome: Officina, 1970), 182: “Si trovano molti Principi grandi (che tengono vascelli in mare, e che hanno stiavi) havere un’ luogo grande p. tenere schiavi mentre che i loro legni sono in porto, quale luogo si chiama comunemente Bagno, ò Serraglio, o Prigione di Schiavi, nel quale luogo sono fatti lavorare, tessere, e tutte le altre cose, che poi servano alla navicatione, de quali Bagni ne è uno à Malta, uno Algieri, et in altri luoghi. Però ne haviamo fatto una pianta d’uno à n’ro capriccio no vi havendo mai visti nessuno. …” Vasari's original handwritten manuscript is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, cat. dis. 4529–94.

51. Vasari the Younger, La città ideale, 182, describes a plan “più distinto, e comodo che si poteva, havendo p. i Forzati fatto uno stanzone da p. se, et un’altro p. li schiavi, così p. i malati, e vecchi un’altro capacissimo nominato spedale. [E] se p. avventura vi fussino schiavi di qualità, ò di rispetto, anco p. questi haviamo fatto luogo distinto. così la casa p. il Capitano, e in sù torrioni delle cantonate haviamo fatto stanze p. le guardie, dovendosi simil luogo guardare come una fortezza, p. le quali guardie anco sopra le loggie si potranno bisognando fare stanze. Così haviamo distinto la cucina dalla cantina, e il luogo da riporre il biscotto, separato da quello delle legne, una fontana in mezzo mi ci pare necessarissima, no solo p. bere, ma p. potere lavare panni, ed altre loro cose.”

52. Ibid., 182: “È per venire oramai alla fine di questo ragionamento, no hà dubbio niuno che infinite altre piante si sariano potute fare p. case botteghe, alberghi, taverne e cose simili, ma bastino queste poche, p. no trascorrere in una infinità di minutie, p. architettore delle quali possono servire i muratori, i legnaiuoli, e gli scarpellini, oltre che no sarà mal veruno il lasciare da far qualcosa aqualcun’altro, il quale sappia più di noi, e da Virtuosi si accetti il buon animo mio, e il desiderio che ho di giovare à tutti.”

53. Frattarelli Fischer, “Bagno delle galere,” 79–80.

54. Danielson, “Livorno,” 108; and Santus, “Il ‘Turco’ e l’inquisitore,” 453.

55. These details are drawn from the 1706 account of the Capuchin monk P. Filippo Bernardi da Firenze (hereafter P. Filippo), “Descrizione del bagno di Livorno,” in Curiosità livornesi inedite o rare, ed. Francesco Pera (Florence: Giusti, 1888), 242–44.

56. Ibid., 243: “Il Bagno non somministra che le due tavole pel riposo: chi poi ha il mezzo di potersi provvedere di qualche strapuntino, o materassa, o almeno saccone di paglia, non vi è ordine in contrario, che ne possa impedire l’esecuzione.”

57. Ibid., 243. Filippo notes that in addition the buonavoglie often received a small ration of meat, as well as a salary of ten lire per month, which he complained was often spent gambling.

58. Frattarelli Fischer, “Bagno delle galere,” 70.

59. Ibid., 80.

60. Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 287–88.

61. See, for example, Archivio di Stato, Florence, Scrittoio delle Fortezze e Fabbriche, 148, fol. F, in which the Posto del Bagno S. Antonio denotes a miniature chiesa in the middle of one wall. P. Filippo (“Descrizione del bagno,” 243) refers to the bagno's large church as la chiesa grande comune and says it was dedicated to the Holy Cross.

62. P. Filippo, “Descrizione del bagno,” 244; and Piombanti, Guida storica, 339–40.

63. Bono, “Schiavi Musulmani,” 857–59.

64. Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 299; and Santus, “Il ‘Turco’ e l’inquisitore,” 454. Nadalo (320–21 n. 101) includes the 1689 testimony of the Capuchin friar Luca da Caltanissetta that describes the interior of the mosque, making clear that the authorities in Livorno allowed Muslim worship because the bagni in North Africa allowed Christians to practice their own religion: “[L]a Moscova dei Turchi … è una piccola casa, nella quale i Turchi non entrano se non a piedi scalzi e ben limpi d’ogni sporchezza, in cui vi è una catedra con due scale, il libro del suo Alcorano ed altri libri della sua legge, in una parte vi sta indornata una cappa, in un altra un trobante et altre coselle quali sono da loro adorati e quivi facciono i loro esercittii della loro maumettana legge. Questa muscova gli si permette perchè anche i turch permettono a Christiani nei loro bagno il fare le loro segrete chiese.”

65. Frattarelli Fischer, “Bagno delle galere,” 83.

66. Ibid., 87.

67. P. Filippo, “Descrizione del bagno,” 242: “Intorno al cortile, ma non per tutto, sono stese molte botteghe fornite di varie cose commestibili da’ forzati e da’ turchi, i quali si aiutano come possono per guadagnar qualche cosa, vendendo tali robe all’altra ciurma, con pagar la pigione però al padrone Serenissimo. Anche dalla banda di fuori il bagno ha buon numero di simili botteghe, nelle quali vendonsi panni, scarpe, ferramenti, oppure sono accommodate per uso di barbiere, o di altre arti esercitate dagli schiavi turchi, da’ quali pure il Granduca ritrae emolumento.” See also Salvadorini, “Traffici con i paesi islamici,” 232–34.

68. Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 286.

69. P. Filippo, “Descrizione del bagno,” 242: “Tanto i turchi quanto le buonevoglie escono il giorno liberi per Livorno, aiutandosi a guadagnar la giornata per mezzo delle suddette arti o botteghe, e con partar colli di mercanzie, vender acqua per la città, e fare altri servizi alle case dei particolari, dai quali ricevono infine la mercede delle loro fatiche. La sera poi a una cert’ora devon tutti costoro tornare a dormire nel Bagno, il quale viene assicurato con triplicate porte fortemente serrate, e fedelmente guardate da persona libera, onorata, che addimandasi il custode del Bagno.” The rules concerning circulation described by Filippo had been greatly eased in the mid-seventeenth century, although previously many slaves had “bought” the right to circulate through bribery; see Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 294.

70. Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 294; and Salvadorini, “Traffici con i paesi islamici,” 231.

71. Danielson, “Livorno,” 204.

72. Nadalo, “Negotiating Slavery,” 303.

73. Frattarelli Fischer, “Bagno delle galere,” 80; and Santus, “Il ‘Turco’ e l’inquisitore,” 455. Piombanti (Guida storica, 339), writing in the late nineteenth century, describes it as being in a semiruined state, surrounded by the Via della Banca, Via dei Magnani, and Via della Rosa Bianca (the latter two streets were demolished in an early twentieth-century reconstruction of the area).

74. John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, rev. ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 103, entry of October 21, 1644.

75. Giambologna designed all three marbles and had his workshop execute them. The Arezzo monument (Piazza Duomo) is similar in conception to the Livornese figure, while the Pisa statue (Piazza Carrara) is joined on its pedestal by a kneeling allegory of the city of Pisa, nursing two babies and looking up toward Ferdinando in supplication. See Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 5–6; and Cole, Ambitious Form, 34, 253–56.

76. On Cosimo's images, see Kurt W. Forster, “Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History in Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15 (1971): 65–103.

77. Ferdinando first approached the Roman sculptor Giovanni Caccini to make this statue but ultimately refused Caccini's asking price. The commission was given to Bandini, a marble specialist trained in Florence by Baccio Bandinelli, in 1595, when he was in the service of Duke Francesco Maria II della Rovere in Urbino. He began work on this statue in 1597. See Charles Avery, “Giovanni Bandini (1540–1599) Reconsidered,” in La scultura: Studi in onori di Andrew S. Ciechanowiecki (Turin: Allemandi, 1994), 25; Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 13–14; Cole, Ambitious Form, 66–67; Ulrich Middeldorf, “Giovanni Bandini, detto Giovanni dell’Opera,” Rivista d’Arte 11 (1929): 515–16; and Eike Schmidt, “Giovanni Bandini tra Marche e Toscana,” Nuovi Studi 3, no. 6 (1998): 69.

78. The signature reads “joh.es bandinus florentinus, f. 1599.”

79. Danielson, “Livorno,” 200–201; and Poole, “Medici Power and Tuscan Unity,” 254. Although in bronze rather than marble, the work by Andrea Calamech (installed 1572) showed the prince in a theatrical pose and the billowing outfit of a courtier, one hand holding the baton of command and the other gently fingering a sword whose point presses downward into the bodiless head of his defeated Turkish enemy.

80. Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, Leone Leoni and the Status of the Artist at the End of the Renaissance (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2011), 5.

81. Although Charles V was not publicly exhibited until long after the Quattro Mori was installed, Leoni's palace, the Casa degli Omenoni, and Ferrante Gonzaga were well known in Tacca's time. See ibid., 15–17, 25, 73–76, 107–31; and Michael P. Mezzatesta, “The Façade of Leone Leoni's House in Milan, the Casa degli Omenoni: The Artist and the Public,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 44 (1985): 233–49.

82. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 14.

83. Ibid., 15.

84. Ibid., 19; and Venturi, “Il monumento livornese,” 32.

85. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 15; Mack-Andrick, Pietro Tacca, 111; and Venturi, “Il monumento livornese,” 111.

86. The many other sculptors trained or assisted in the workshop in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries included the Dutchman Adriaen de Vries, the German Hans Reichle, and the Florentine Antonio Susini. See Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, vol. 5 (Florence, 1702), 355.

87. On Tacca's early career, see Francesca Petrucci, “La formazione di Pietro Tacca: Dal marmo di Carrara al bronzo di Firenze,” in Pietro Tacca: Carrara, la Toscana, le grandi corti europee, ed. Franca Falletti (Florence: Mandragora, 2007), 23–39.

88. Simonetta Lo Vullo-Bianchi, “Note e documenti su Pietro e Ferdinando Tacca,” Rivista d’Arte 13 (1931): 142.

89. Ibid., 146–47, 153–54. In 1619, the duke of Savoy, Carlo Emanuele I, ordered an equestrian monument after Tacca had sent models from Florence, but the artist ultimately refused the invitation to move to Turin, or perhaps he was pressured by the Medici court not to serve a competing sovereign. Although there is some debate about the attribution, he may also have been involved in the monument of King Louis XIII of France in the Place Royale, a sculpture that, like that of Henri IV, was destroyed in the Revolution.

90. Baldinucci, Notizie, vol. 5, 356; and Dimitrios Zikos, “Giambologna's Land, House, and Workshops in Florence,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 46 (2002): 389.

91. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 20–21 n. 19; and Venturi, “Il monumento livornese,” 8.

92. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 25; Vanessa Montigiani, “Frammenti dal monumento di Enrico IV,” in Franca Falletti, Pietro Tacca, 150–53; and Wagner, “Outrages,” 296, 309. Some fragments of Henri and the horse survive in storage at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris; they consist of parts of the king's right forearm (grasping a baton), left hand, and left leg, as well as a piece of the rear left hoof of the horse. A replacement horse and effigy of Henri IV, reasonably faithful to the original Tacca bronzes, with some additions taken directly from the king's death mask, were made after the Revolution by Frédéric Lemot and installed on the Pont-Neuf in 1818.

93. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 24. On Francavilla (born in Cambrai as Pierre Franqueville), see Donatella Pegazzano, Il Giasone di Palazzo Zanchini: Pietro Francavilla al Museo del Bargello (Florence: Giunti, 2002); and Stella Seitun, “Giambologna e Pietro Francavilla a Genova,” in Genova e l’Europa atlantica: Opere, artisti, committenti, collezionisti; Inghilterra, Fiandre, Portogallo, ed. Piero Boccardi and Clario Di Fabio (Milan: Silvana, 2006), 143–49.

94. Baldinucci, Notizie, vol. 5, 357: “Diciamo dunque, che il detto Cavallo per Francia bene accomodato in casse, fu in Livorno per l’imbarco il dì 30 d’Aprile 1613, ma noi tragghiamo da Lettere originali di Francesco di Bartolommeo Bordoni Fiorentino Discepolo del Francavilla, e che seguitatolo in Francia vi fu dichiarato Scultore del Re, ed a cui anche toccò ad ornare di bei Getti la Basa stata fatta con Disegno del Cigoli, ove poi fu posato esso Cavallo. …” A few years earlier, Cigoli had also been involved, together with Gregorio Pagani, in drawing plans of the horse for Giambologna's Cosimo I; see Cole, Ambitious Form, 245.

95. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 35.

96. Massing, From the “Age of Discovery,” 195. Paul H. D. Kaplan, who has written extensively on the depiction of black-skinned Africans in European art, believes that the figure's features do not conclusively suggest sub-Saharan origins (personal communication, August 2013). On French responses to slavery, see Gillian Weiss, Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

97. Henri Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris, vol. 1 (Paris, 1724), 236: “Ce gros cheval foule aux pieds les quatre parties du monde, representées par quatre captifs de bronze, grands comme nature, & liés aux quatre angles du pied d’estal; captifs qu’on peut appeller des squelettes, tant ils sont maigres & décharnés, aussi ceux qui s’y connoissent soutiennent que s’il n’y en avoit point du tout, cela n’en seroit que mieux.”

98. See Alexandre Lenoir, Musée des monuments français, vol. 4 (Paris, 1805), 130–31. Lenoir includes an inscription, originally intended for the monument but apparently overruled by Cardinal Richelieu, that he claims to have found in an unnamed chronicle dating from the time of the monument's unveiling in the early seventeenth century and that identifies the figure as African.

99. Secretary Lorenzo Usimbardi's letter, dated February 6, 1607, was once found in the Società Colombaria of Florence but was destroyed during World War II. It is unclear whether the letter used Florentine dating (in which the new year began on March 25) and should thus be considered written in 1608 rather than 1607; on this point, see Veronica Carpita, “Postille ai monumenti seicenteschi con prigionieri a Parigi e a Livorno,” in Lo sguardo archeologico: I normalisti per Paul Zanker, ed. Francesco De Angelis (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2007), 262–67. Before its destruction, the letter was transcribed by Niccola Ulacacci, I Quattro Mori: Opera stupenda di Pietro Tacca (Livorno: Meucci, 1874), 44: “Mandando S. A. [Sua Altezza] Pietro Tacha a Livorno per vedere uno stiavo di bella vita et havere comodo di formarlo con la cera senza danno alcuno … vuole et comanda S. A. che il Commissario delle Galere … glene dia comodità qual senza rischio di detrimento come sopra, li domanderà.” Carpita, 264, has discovered traces in a nineteenth-century chronicle of an undated letter by Ferdinando to Paolo Rucellai, who is described as “Provveditore Generale delle Galere della Religione di S. Stefano” (that is, in charge of the knighthood's galleys). According to this note, Rucellai was instructed to allow Tacca to model the entire body of a “well-formed slave that in that time was in the Bagno of Livorno to then serve for the four bronze slaves on the statue of the Grand Duke in the Harbor [di dare comodo a Pietro Tacca scultore, che getti la maschera di tutto intero uno schiavo ben formato, che sia in quel tempo nel Bagno di Livorno per formarne poi i quattro schiavi di bronzo, che sono alla statua del G. D. nella Darsena].” This undated document does not specify Ferdinando as the grand duke sending this command, and since Rucellai died in 1626, it could have been written any moment up until the years of the work's casting. A second indication that Tacca may have studied models from life before 1621 derives from the eighteenth-century chronicler Mariano Santelli (see n. 101 below), who claims that according to the notes of one “Capitano Santini di Livorno” (presumably from the early seventeenth century), Tacca went to the bagno in 1617 to find models for the first two slaves. This is possible, but we know that work on the bronzes did not begin in earnest until after Cosimo II's death in early 1621. However one reads the dating of these visits or the monument they were intended for, they all carry the important suggestion from the period that Ferdinando wanted Tacca to study slaves from life with the intention of portraying them on a high-visibility public monument, and hence that Tacca was expected not to rely simply on received iconography or traditional expectations in forming his slave figures. On these sources and some hypotheses concerning their meaning, see Carpita, 264, 268; Mandalis, “Quattro Mori e il Granduca,” 35–36; and Ostrow, “The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves.”

100. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 24–25, skillfully reviews the possible options, concluding (as I do) that the 1607/8 visit was unrelated to Tacca's commission for the Quattro Mori, although he may have utilized those models over a decade later when the official commission arrived. Also worth mentioning regarding the initial modeling after real-life slaves are the four gesso figures in the Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori (previously the Villa Mimbelli) in Livorno, sometimes attributed to Tacca as preparatory studies although only two of the figures match features with the finished bronzes (see Emilia Bartolotti, “Bozzetto per i Quattro Mori,” in Franca Falletti, Pietro Tacca, 122–25). Brook (“Afterlife of Tacca's Moors,” 171–73) has convincingly shown that, rather than serving in the process of making the Livornese monument, these gesso works are almost certainly related to G. B. Foggini's later compositions descended from the Quattro Mori.

101. It is possible, and has been conjectured, that Tacca made further studies from life of Livornese slaves while installing the base in 1617. The source of this claim is the “Santelli manuscript,” a handwritten chronicle with entries by year written by the Augustinian friar Mariano Santelli, now in the Biblioteca Labronica in Livorno (“Mss. dello stato antico e moderno overo origine di Livorno in Toscana osia cronaca di Livorno di Niccola Magri frate romito agostiniano dal XVI secolo fino a tutto l’anno 1646, e fino a tutto l’anno 1770 fornita dal prete Mariano Santelli dottore in sacra Teologia”). As the title indicates, the manuscript has an unusual history; Santelli himself created it while editing a new edition of the seventeenth-century friar Nicola Magri's Discorso cronologico della origine di Livorno in Toscana dall’anno della sua fondazione, fino a 1646 (Naples, 1647; edited and expanded by Santelli as Stato antico e moderno ovvero origine di Livorno in Toscana, dalla sua fondazione, fino all’anno 1646, 3 vols. [Florence, 1769–72]). However, despite these titles, neither of the published editions covered anything past the mid-sixteenth century. The Santelli manuscript, compiled most likely about 1770 when the other editions were being edited, contains annual entries dating back to the late sixteenth century, with those entries prepared by Santelli in the late eighteenth century in consultation with primary and secondary documents he found in the Livornese archives. It is unclear why the Santelli manuscript itself was never published, but it remains the source of some important and occasionally questionable commentary on the Quattro Mori and seicento slavery in Livorno. Part of the manuscript's entry concerning the monument (Santelli manuscript, vol. 4, fol. 261; quoted in Venturi, “Il monumento livornese,” 8) is borrowed from the earlier text of Baldinucci (see n. 116 below), but Santelli believes that Tacca was already planning ahead to cast the slaves during the months in 1617 when he was working on the marble base: “Perchè doveva esser questo colosso [Bandini's Ferdinando I] corredato e ornato di quattro statue di bronzo rappresentanti quattro schiavi turchi, nudi, incatenati e seduti cadauno a uno de’ quattro lati del fusto o base, in esecuzione delle cose già progettate in Firenze, a tal fine Pietro Tacca si porta, prima di partire per Firenze, nel ‘Bagno’ di Livorno a vedere e considerare da vicino, uno ad uno, tutti li schiavi turchi. …” No further documentary evidence survives to prove that Tacca made his studies of slaves beginning in 1617, but it is certainly possible, and some responsible scholars (such as Mack-Andrick, Pietro Tacca, 113) believe that work on the bronzes began as early as that year. While acknowledging that Tacca may have begun studies in 1617, I adopt a starting date of 1621 for the first pair of slaves since no official commission for the sculptural figures came before the death of Cosimo II in that year.

102. Tacca waited less than two weeks after Cosimo II's death (on February 28, 1621) to make his proposal, leaving little doubt that he thought he would have better odds to get his idea approved under the new regime. See Venturi, “Il monumento livornese,” 9, with the text of Tacca's letter (Archivio di Stato, Pisa, Archivio dell’Ordine di S. Stefano, 1120, Suppliche ed informazioni, fol. 20, parte 2a, c. 440), which Venturi claims is dated March 8, 1621 (Mack-Andrick, Pietro Tacca, 112, dates it two days later): “[I]n cambio della statua di marmo del Gran Duca Ferdinando, che si trattava di metere sopra la base delli schiavi che io fo per Livorno, io ci facessi la statua similmente di marmo della Religione di S. Stephano … in essecutione di che, vengo con questa mia a supplicare V. S. Ill.ma a farmi gratia di procurare da Lor A. A. detta resolutione, acciò io possa dar principio al modello di detta Statua, e far cavare il marmo, et andare ad abbozarlo prima che venghino li caldi. …”

103. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 16, offers several reasons why the Religione di Santo Stefano sculpture was rejected, including Tacca's lack of experience in marble and the recent criticism he had received from the knights for a proposed commission in the order's church of S. Stefano in Pisa.

104. There has been some debate on which were the first two to be installed, descending from the unreliability of the Santelli manuscript (see n. 101 above). Brook (“Afterlife of Tacca's Moors,” 166–67 n. 7) notes that the older nude figure (referred to here as “Alì”) was definitely among the first pair. There is no conclusive evidence to identify the other figure installed at this time, but I here follow Brook, who believes the slave with black features is of a much higher quality than either of the other two remaining figures and must have been among the initial pair installed, making him (not the skyward-looking youth) “Morgiano.” Ostrow (“The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves”) concurs, based in part on the association of the world morgiano with a dark grape used in the production of wine, and also on the fact that Filippo Baldinucci, in Vocabolario toscano dell’arte del disegno (Florence, 1681), identifies the word “Moro” with black skin “come sono gli Etiopi.” I would caution that the language in Baldinucci's vita of Tacca (notably the phrase “Schiavo Moro Turco,” as seen in n. 116 below) and in the Santelli manuscript remains too vague to draw definitive conclusions.

105. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 16–17. The additions to the configuration of the base in 1622 (made by Tacca's assistant Taddeo di Michele di Carrara) indicate that Tacca had not yet received the commission for the bronze slaves when designing the marble base five years earlier. A drawing by the German sculptor Georg Petel of the older figure positioned in the southwest corner (Staatliche Museen, Berlin, inv. no. KdZ 9950) carries a date of August 1623, meaning that the first two bronzes were definitely on display by then.

106. Baldinucci, Notizie, vol. 5, 359; and Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 17. Baldinucci (ibid., 371) also names Tacca's assistants in casting the monument: Cosimo Cenni, Michele Lucherini, Cosimo Cappelli, Lodovico Salvetti, Bartolommeo Cennini, and Andrea Bolgi.

107. Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 38. Copies of those fountains, cast by the Fonderia Marinelli in Florence in 1956, stand a few blocks east of the monument among Livorno's postwar construction in the Piazza Colonnella.

108. Ibid., 18; and Lo Vullo-Bianchi, “Pietro e Ferdinando Tacca,” 210–13.

109. The Santelli manuscript describes the contents of the trophies as “Manto Reale barbaresco disteso come per strato, il Regio Turbante, la scimitarra, l’Arco, il Turcasso, le Freccie, etc. …” (quoted in Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno, 22 n. 49). Santelli wrote this description before the trophies were destroyed.

110. Dietrich Erben, “Die Reiterdenkmäler der Medici in Florenz und ihre politische Bedeutung,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 40 (1996): 337.

111. For an example of the legend of the work being made from captured weapons, see Giuseppe Vivoli, Annali di Livorno dalla sua origine sino all’anno di Gesù Cristo 1840, vol. 3 (Livorno: Giulio Sardi, 1844), 478.

112. Malcolm Campbell, “Family Matters: Notes on Don Lorenzo and Don Giovanni de’ Medici at Villa della Petraia,” in Ars naturam adiuvans: Festschrift für Matthias Winner zum 11. Marz 1996 (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1996), 505–13. The bronzes also play a central role in a much later image romanticizing the moment of the monument's unveiling, Annibale Gatti's Ferdinando II de’ Medici Presenting Pietro Tacca to Vittoria della Rovere, a ceiling fresco (1874–75) in the Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori, Livorno. Here the statue of Ferdinando is barely visible, cut off at the ankle, while the ceremonial presentation of the artist and his work to the Medici sovereigns focuses attention entirely on the slaves. (A second, much smaller oil-on-canvas version by Gatti is in the collection of the Camera di Commercio, Livorno.)

113. Paul H. D. Kaplan, “Italy, 1490–1700,” in From the “Age of Discovery” to the Age of Abolition: Artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, vol. 3, pt. 1 of The Image of the Black in Western Art, ed. David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 158–87.

114. Paul H. D. Kaplan, “Black Turks: Venetian Artists and Perceptions of Ottoman Ethnicity,” in The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750, ed. James G. Harper (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2011), 44–49.

115. Kaplan, “Italy, 1490–1700,” 107–10. The servant or slave in Laura Dianti seems to be the first surviving image of a serving person of color in an independent European portrait, although sometimes such figures appeared earlier in broader contexts (as in the oculus of Andrea Mantegna's Camera Picta in Mantua). See also Kate Lowe, “The Lives of African Slaves and People of African Descent in Renaissance Europe,” in Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, ed. Joaneath Spicer (Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 2012), 14–19.

116. Baldinucci, Notizie, vol. 5, 359: “[Q]uivi ebbe facoltà di valersi di quanti Schiavi vi avesse riconosciuti, de’ muscoli più leggiadri, e più accomodati all’imitazione per formarne un perfettissimo corpo, e molti e molti ne formò nelle più belle parti. Uno di costoro fu uno Schiavo Moro Turco, che chiamavasi per soprannome Morgiano, che per grandezza di persona e per fattezze d’ogni sua parte era bellissimo, e fu di grande ajuto al Tacca per condurne la bella figura, colla sua naturale effigie, che oggi vediamo; ed io che tali cose scrivo, in tempo di mia puerizia in età di dieci anni li vidi, e conobbi, e parlai con esso non senza gusto, benche in si poc’età; nel ravvisar, che io faceva a confronto del Ritratto il bello originale.” This passage also makes clear that Baldinucci (1624–97) believed the commission for the four bronzes to have come in 1615. He was incorrect; as the letter to the Granduchesse Tutrici in 1621 makes clear, no work had begun on the bronzes until after that date. Regarding Baldinucci's racial terminology, the terms Turco and Moro often were used interchangeably; here they are both used. In more technical documents, such as the slave records of the Tuscan state, Turco refers to anyone from Ottoman territory in Europe and Asia (and sometimes, though not always, Egypt), while Moro typically referred to Africans, whether dark- or light-skinned. Those from Maghrebi lands, including present-day Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco, were often indiscriminately placed into either category (see, for example, n. 117 below), although sometimes they were referred to specifically by their place of origin (di Algeria, di Tripoli, and so on). See Bono, “Schiavi musulmani,” 849; Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, xxviii; and Kaplan, “Black Turks,” 41–66.

117. On this source, see n. 101 above. Santelli (quoted in Venturi, “Il monumento livornese,” 8–9) further draws on and expands Baldinucci's description of Morgiano, identifying him as a native of Algiers: “[E] finalmente [Tacca] prende l’idea e il modello del primo de’ due, da gettarsi (perocché in due tempi fatti furono e fissati sotto il colosso) da certo Turco shiavo, nativo d’Algeri, di giovanile età, forte, ben piantato, meglio muscolato, insomma perfettissimo in ogni sua parte e di non comune altezza, detto ‘Morgiano’; e del secondo, da un robusto vecchio Saletino detto ‘Alì.’…” [Finally, Tacca took the inspiration and the model for the first of the pair (since they were made and attached to the base in two campaigns) from a certain Turkish slave called “Morgiano.” He was a native of Algiers, young in age, strong, well-built; in short, he was perfect in every way and unusually tall. For the second, he modeled from a robust older Saletin man named “Alì.”…]

118. Richard Lassels, The Voyage of Italy, or a Compleat Journey through Italy, vol. 1 (Paris, 1670), 233. This is echoed in a sonnet by the eighteenth-century poet Bartolommeo-Gaetano Aulla (in Else Lewy, Pietro Tacca: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Florentiner Skulptur [Cologne: Bachem, 1927], 107).

119. Jan Janszoon Struys, The Voiages and Travels of John Struys, trans. John Morrison, vol. 2 (London, 1684), 68. This interpretation lingers still; see, for example, Piombanti, Guida storica, 334–35: “Il Tacca venne a Livorno, dopo la conquista delle ricchissime galere, fatta nell’Arcipelago l’anno 1602, a prendere il modello dei più belli schiavi; e dicono fosse un padre con tre figli, poi li fuse in bronzo adoperando i conquistati cannoni.” (After the conquest of the very rich galleys in the Archipelago in the year 1602, Tacca came to Livorno to find a model for the most handsome of the slaves. And they say of the sculpture that it was a father with three sons, and that Tacca cast them in bronze taken from the captured cannons.)

120. In the eighteenth century, Edward Wright (Some Observations, vol. 2, 342) noted, “Some imagine the four Slaves to represent four several parts of the Turkish Dominions,” while French playwright Victor Joseph Étienne de Jouy (The Hermit in Italy, or Observations on the Manners and Customs of Italy, vol. 1 [London, 1825], 232) claimed they represented allegories of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. On the various interpretations, see Ostrow, “The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves.” Brook, “Afterlife of Tacca's Moors,” 165–91, discusses some later compositions by G. B. Foggini and his workshop that descend from the Quattro Mori, several of which were identified as referring to the continents.

121. Bono, “Schiavi musulmani,” 849–50. Some other port cities specified the origins or race of the slaves in more detail; a Neapolitan register from 1568 lists 210 slaves, comprising 61 Maghrebi (of whom four were black Africans), 132 “Turks” (meaning from Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, and Egypt), eight moriscos from Spain, and nine converts. The fact that the black Africans were listed with the Maghrebi is common, but the detailing of their number is more unusual.

122. Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo, 194–95; Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 145–52; and Ostrow, “The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves.”

123. Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo, 194–95.

124. Kaplan, “Italy, 1490–1700,” 95–99.

125. On treatments of black skin and physiognomy in the period, see Joaneath Spicer, “European Perceptions of Blackness as Reflected in the Visual Arts,” in Spicer, Revealing the African Presence, 35–59.

126. Joseph Spence, Letters from the Grand Tour, ed. Slava Klima (Montreal: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1975), 119.

127. Carlo Goldoni, La dalmatina, in Raccolta completa delle commedie di Carlo Goldoni, vol. 19 (Florence, 1829), 255–319. On this play, see Larry Woolf, Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 25–75.

128. The English traveler William Davies (A True Relation, chap. 2, fol. B3r–v) discussed ceremonies of adult male circumcision in his own account of captivity, casting it mostly in a positive light: “A Turke is Circumcised after this manner. The better Gentleman he is, the longer he stayes afore he be Circumcised, but the time being come, then is he put upon a very faire white horse, being very costly attired, and before him goeth two or three hundreth by two and two in purple coates, bearing waxe candles in their hands, and after them followeth a great many playing on diffused Instruments making of a great noise, then followeth a Bull covered with very faire Arras, and his hornes gilded, and next rideth he that shall be Circumcised, with all his friends following, and thus he rideth to the place of Circumcision, where they cut off the foreskinne of his yard, naming of him Morat, Shebane, or Hosan, or some such like name: then will they take the Bull, and turne his head to to the East-ward, then cut his throat, saying, this day wee have done a good deed, then they cut the Bull in yeeces, and distribute it among his friends, and kindred, and so they returne home where they doe feast with great ioy.”

129. Mack-Andrick, Pietro Tacca, 118; Morigi, “Monumenti e bronzo,” 8–10; and Simonetta Taccini, “Monumento a Ferdinando I, detto dei Quattro Mori,” in Livorno: Progetto e storia di una città tra il 1500 e il 1600 (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi e Pacini, 1980), 282. Tacca usually did not place his signature on the bodies of his figures but rather on some accompanying item; the monument to Philip III in Madrid, for example, is signed on the horse's saddle.

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Mark Rosen

Mark Rosen received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches the history of early modern art and cartography at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the author of The Mapping of Power in Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and Intellectual Context (Cambridge University Press, 2015) [School of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, Mail Stop JO.31, Richardson, Tex. 75080, [email protected]].