An oval hole can be discerned in the belly (Ø 1.5 cm), through which the core material was removed. This hole may already have been made in the wax to facilitate deventilation during the casting process. A small hole can also be discerned near the left eye, lower right.
Alloy: high zinc brass with some tin, lead; copper with impurities (Cu 68.77%; Zn 25.98%; Sn 2.64%; Pb 1.64%; Sb 0.13%; As 0.20%; Fe 0.21%; Ni 0.07%).

The tail and the two right legs have been repaired. The patina is highly worn around the area of the belly.

…; from the dealer A. Heilbronner, Lucerne, to the museum, as a gift from the city of Schaffhausen, May 1950¹¹The gift was motivated by the exhibition Rembrandt und seine Zeit held in that city at Museum Allerheiligen in 1949.

Object number: BK-16426

Credit line: Gift of the Schaffhausen Council

At least twelve casts exist of this bronze.²²For an enumeration, see C. Avery, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Frick Art Museum, coll. cat. Pittsburgh 1993, p. 129. The heavy, scarcely professional appearance of the present sculpture suggests a northern manufacture, possibly in a bell or cannon foundry. A technical idiosyncrasy is the round opening in the middle of the bull’s belly, through which the core material was removed. A comparably sized hole in the same place can be discerned on a bronze (also depicting a bull) in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (BK-16944), attributed to Artus I Quellinus (1609-1668). In both cases, these holes were perhaps made in the wax prior to casting, thus allowing air to escape when pouring the metal.

None of the twelve known casts of the bull can be linked to a documented provenance earlier than the late nineteenth century; nor does such a work figure in seventeenth-century paintings of Flemish art cabinet interiors. Avery therefore interpreted the model as perhaps being a nineteenth-century pastiche, or a seventeenth-century model or bronze from which large numbers of surmoulages were made in the nineteenth century.³³C. Avery, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Frick Art Museum, coll. cat. Pittsburgh 1993, p. 132. Considering the primitive execution of the Amsterdam cast, however, it seems less probable that, in this specific case, the work concerned is a product of the nineteenth century.

Contrary to Quellinus’s aforementioned Bellowing Bull and Giambologna’s oft-copied Pacing Bull (BK-15784),⁴⁴C. Avery, Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture, Oxford 1987, no. 143. the modeller of this bronze has chosen for a far more dynamic, even charging stance. The stalwart bull’s legs are poised to attack his (invisible) opponent, with his tail whipping upward. The animal’s combative pose led Bode to conclude that a bronze version of the bull in J. Pierpont Morgan’s possession in 1910 was connected to two other bronzes in the same collection: one of a jumping dog, the other of a nude hunter with a dog.⁵⁵W. von Bode, Bronzes of the Renaissance and Subsequent Periods: Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan, 2 vols., coll. cat. New York 1910, vol. 1, p. XLI, vol. 2, no. 217, plates CLII, CLIII, CLIV. He proposed that these three works, today preserved at the Frick Museum in Pittsburgh, were perhaps part of a large ensemble centred on the theme of a wild bull chase. As affirmed in paintings by Hans Bol, Peter Paul Rubens and Paul de Vos, this was a beloved theme in Flemish art. In sculpture, the largest known example of a hunting tableau composed of individual statuettes – fifteen, to be precise – is that of a bull chase preserved at the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen (on long-term loan from the Ludwig collection),⁶⁶G. Bott et al., Ludwigs Lust: Die Sammlung Irene und Peter Ludwig, exh. cat. Nuremberg (Germanisches Nationalmuseum) 1993, no. 109, as ‘Cajus Gabriel Cibber (?)’. recently attributed to the Neapolitan sculptor Lorenzo Vaccaro (1653-1706).⁷⁷J. Warren (ed.), Beauty and Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Marino Collection, exh. cat. London (The Wallace Collection) 2010, pp. 210-11.

Avery rejected Bode’s association of the bull with the aforementioned statuettes on the basis of observed differences in style and facture. He convincingly identified the separate Jumping Dog as an invention of the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Bandini (1540-1599) and the Hunter with Dog as a work by the neo-classicist John Gibson (1790-1866).⁸⁸C. Avery, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Frick Art Museum, coll. cat. Pittsburgh 1993, p. 131. Avery upheld the bull’s localization in Flanders,⁹⁹H.R. Weihrauch, Europäische Bronzestatuetten, 15.-18. Jahrhundert, Braunschweig 1967, p. 379. generally acknowledged since Bode. His theory that the bull was conceived as an independent statuette – a rejection of its forming part of a bull chase or any other ensemble of individual works – is supported by the fact that not one of the other eleven bulls known today is accompanied by one or more other figures. Noteworthy, however, is the presence of the hole just below the left eye on the present bull. Was it possible that here at some point a dog (?) was attached, as such being butted by the bull’s head?

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 208, with earlier literature; C. Avery, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Frick Art Museum, coll. cat. Pittsburgh 1993, pp. 129, 132

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Charging Bull, Southern Netherlands, c. 1850 - c. 1900', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035633