Selim Zilkha and Mary Hayley are the couple behind the prestigious Laetitia Vineyard and Winery, my favorite American wine, so when they invited me to their Bel Air home for the unveiling of El Toro, I readily accepted. Their home is noted for being one of the most comfortable albeit unpretentious residences adjacent to the Hotel Bel-Air, and it is famed for being the site of several larger-than-life bronze reproductions of wild animals. I mean, a 10-foot high grizzly bear, a life-size rhino, a magnificent gorilla, even two baby elephants framing the front door. But I was unprepared for the sight which I beheld as I drove up to their front gate. There in all its majesty was a truly magnificent white marble statue of a Spanish bull: El Toro. Some eight foot high, anatomically correct, stunningly beautiful. At lunch, Selim and Mary told me the story behind the unusual artifact. "We bought the original sculpture in Paris in September 2007. It was "The Sacred Bull," Rome 1785, by Joseph Chinard (Lyon 1756-1813), in Carrara marble, about two feet in length. They went on to recount that someone had suggested they commission a life-size version, an idea which intrigued them as it would round out their unique menagerie. Mary laughed as she went on, "We didn't realize it would become an international project." Selim detailed:
We had many, many photographs taken of the original, then hired draughtsmen in Portugal to prepare the drawings. We took them to China, where a life-size clay model was created. After a few refinements, we approved it. From that, a fiberglass model was made.
Mary added, "The model was then shipped over a thousand miles to another part of China, where El Toro The Bull was carved from a solid piece of marble which had been mined in Greece." On the wall of their living room is a series of photos depicting what it took to ship the statue here from China on a freighter, then the efforts of lifting it by crane and setting it on its site beside the front gate. I salute my friends for having the imagination and love of fine art to have created this astonishing, magnificent tribute to all that is great in our mysterious universe.
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