Animals in Combat: Giovanni Francesco Susini’s Lion Attacking a Horse and Leopard Attacking a Bull

The Frick presents a special cabinet installation this February that explores the history of an important sculptural theme, animals in combat, while celebrating a 2002 gift to the institution by Walter A. and Vera Eberstadt. The focus of the exhibition is a pair of extremely rare and exquisite late Renaissance bronzes attributed to the Florentine sculptor. Susini is known to have made only two of these pendant groups, and the Frick pair is the only one in an American public collection. Lion Attacking a Horse and Leopard Attacking a Bull will be presented along with a selection of contemporary prints, drawings, and books that illustrate that exotic animals (panthers, elephants, lions) were real—although exceptional—presences in the life and entertainment of the Italian courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries