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| What are this? Image via |
My parents live just a few blocks from this great little park space on 57th street. It's been a favourite spot; it's a perfect quiet little space to sit amongst some amazing buildings and gaze at the river. But this guy has confused me for years. Why doesn't he have a plaque or something to explain what he is? He's kind of out of place with the size and grandeur of the little park itself; what is he doing here?
So you can imagine how confused I was when, on a trip home, I stumbled across the exact same boar in the middle of Sydney.
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| Why am I being followed by a bronzed pig? Image via |
I did a little research at the time, but came up with nothing. For some reason, the other day, the boar popped back into my head and I decided to have another crack at finding out its deal. Well, I'm not sure how I went so wrong the first time, because this time it was really easy.
His name is Il Porcellino, which is Italian for piglet. He's a copy of a copy of a fountain in Florence, which is also a copy of a former version of itself, which is itself a copy or something else.
Do you need me to back up yet?
The Porcellino that I've seen in Sydney and NYC is a copy of this boar, sculpted around 1634 by Pietro Tacca. Tacca himself was creating a copy of an ancient Greek marble boar, which you can find today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Tacca's bronze boar lived in the fountain until it was moved (although no-one seems to be giving me a reliable number on exactly when) and replaced with a replica to preserve it.
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| Here he is! We found him! Image via |
He's known in Florence as a good-luck symbol. Why is his nose a different colour than his body? If you rub it, legend says that you will return to Florence. Another fable says that if you put a coin in his mouth and let it fall into the grate below, where the fountain's water runs, he'll bring you good luck.
Copies of Il Porcellino have since cropped up all over the world. In addition to my little Sutton Park, you can find it nine U.S. states (Arkansas, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Missouri, another in New York, South Carolina, Vermont, and twice in Texas). Beyond the states, you can find him twice in Canada and France; in four spots in Great Britain; and others in Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, elsewhere in Italy, and of course - outside the Sydney Hospital.
That means that this pig has seen more of history - and probably more of the world - than any of us ever will. Every piece I read on him includes a location left out of the piece before it, so I suspect you can find him in quite a few places that I'm leaving out.
Have you seen him somewhere?
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