Represented in high relief at half life-size, this bull trots to the right in front of a thin wall that offers additional support to his legs. His scapulae are realistically rendered, as are his hip joints and tendons, which stand out and structure his heavy body in a varied manner. His head is too small. Originally inclined, it offered a less humanized gaze than it does now. The remains of color on his jowls suggest that the marble was originally colored reddish brown.

Cattle have been the subject of figurative art since ancient times, when they frequently took the form of votive representations or funerary monuments. It was also common to represent the courtship of male and female animals intended to be sacrificed on the altars of the gods. The present sculpture is not free standing. Instead, it is carved in high relief, indicating that it was unquestionably intended for use in an architectural setting. The animal’s underfed appearance alludes to the poverty of country life, a subject often addressed in bucolic Hellenic and Roman art as the Romans associated it with the primitive yet joyful lives of their forefathers, and of shepherds Romulus and Remus. That would imply that this relief does not represent a sacrificial animal. A century ago, W. Amelung described other reliefs of this type at the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which is now the Museo Centrale Montemartini in Rome. These were a cow, an ox and two fragments of shepherds, as well as a complete third figure of a shepherd at the Uffizzi in Florence.

According to the most recent study, the present work and another at the Museo del Prado (number E00111) are replicas. The fact that all of these reliefs were probably created at the same time suggests they belonged to the same monument. The scarcity of available elements makes it difficult to precisely date these animals beyond the first imperial period, but they may orginially have belonged to Nero’s Domus Aurea, which had a garden with a bucolic program that may have extended as far as the Lacus Pastorum, close to where these statues were discovered.

Schröder, Stephan F., Catálogo de la escultura clásica: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2004, p.324-328