The Medici lions are a pair of marble sculptures of lions: one of which is Roman, dating to the 2nd century AD, and the other a 16th-century pendant. Both were by 1598 placed at the Villa Medici, Rome. Since 1789 they have been displayed at the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. The sculptures depict standing male lions with a sphere or ball under one paw, looking to the side.
Fancelli's ancient lion
Vacca's lion
The Albani lion, a similar ancient sculpture, now at the Louvre
The original Medici lions at the Villa Medici (Giovanni Francesco Venturini 1691)
The Villa Medici is a Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French State, has housed the French Academy in Rome since 1803. A musical evocation of its garden fountains features in Ottorino Respighi's Fountains of Rome.
Villa Medici in Rome
Villa Medici seen from the Piazza Trinità dei Monti above the Spanish Steps.
The fountain in 2002.
Portrait by Ingres of fellow student Merry-Joseph Blondel in front of the Villa in 1809.
