Donatello's bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici rule in Florence - Bibliography

The most comprehensive text on the Tyrannicides is Pliny's Natural History, although even Pliny does not offer a complete physical description of the sculpture group. Cosimo owned a 13th-century manuscript of the Natural History procured for him by Niccolo Niccoli in Lubeck (listed in Ullman and Stadter as nos. 791-92). Cosimo's sons, Giovanni and Piero, cads commissioned son illuminated version. All three manuscripts are now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence. Cosimo's manuscript is Plut. LXXXII.1; those owned by his sons are Plut. LXXXII.3 and Plut. LXXXII.4.

(37.) The citation of the Tyrannicides stands out in Pliny's accounts of the development of bronze sculpture because it is so early in date. He otherwise traced the first bronze sculptures and the first paintings no earlier than the era of Phidias, decades after the creation of the Tyrannicides (Natural History 36.15).

(38.) According to the Natural History 34.17, from The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of Art, trans. Katherine Jex-Blake and annot. Eugenie Sellers, 2d ed. (Chicago: Argonaut, 1968), 14-15: "The Athenians were, I believe, introducing a new custom when they set up statues at the public expense in honor of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who killed the tyrant. This occurred in the very year in which the kings were expelled from Rome. A refined ambition led to the universal adoption of the custom, and statues began to adorn the public places of every town; the memories of men were immortalized, and their honors were no longer merely graven on their tombstones, but handed down for posterity to read on doe pedestals of statues. Later on the rooms and halls of private houses became so many public places, and clients began to honor patrons in this way"; and in the Natural History 34.70 (Jex-Blake and Sellers, 55-57): "Praxiteles also, although more successful and consequently better known as a worker of marble, c reated admirable works in bronze.... Other works of his are ... statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the Slayers of the Tyrant. These were carried off by Xerxes, king of the Persians, and restored to Athens by Alexander the Great after his conquest of Persia."

(39.) Pliny particularly praised the ingenuity of Amphicrates' sculpture of Laena. He explained that the Athenians wanted to honor Laena's bravery but that they were unwilling to commemorate a harlot, so resorted to a play on her name and commissioned a statue of a lioness. They stipulated that Amphicrates should carve the animal without a tongue so that Laena's heroic choice of silence would long be remembered (Natural History 34.72).

(40.) Lorenzo Ghiberti, I commentarii 1.6.8, ed. Lorenzo Bartoli (Florence: Giunti, 1998), 55-56, my translation: "I believe that the Athenians were the first to set up statues in public of the tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton. It was done in the same Olympiad that the kings were expelled from Rome. From that point on very human ambitions led to the practice of installing statuary...as an ornament in all cities to commemorate throughout time the memory of men and of the honors they had gained, and the practice began of inscribing the bases [of the monuments]...." Commentarii 1.6.33 (62), again following Pliny, attributes the Tyrannicides to Praxiteles: "Praxiteles was very happy and famous, and created the most beautiful works in bronze ... during the reign of Claudius he also made the Venus, which was in marble and of the most perfect art, and ... Harmodios and Aristogeiton the Tyrannicides, which was carried off by Xerxes and then returned to the Athenians by Alexander the Great, after he had conquer ed the [capital] city of Persia."