Capitoline Museum

The remains of the Colossal Statue of Constantine I in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill are from the Basilica of Constantine in the Forum Romanum. The Basilica of Constantine housed the offices of the Prefect of the City, the highest ranking imperial official during the reign of Constantine the Great, and the colossal statue stood in the W. apse of the basilica. Constantine appeared seated, with a globe in one hand and the other hand raised in salute. The statue was an acrolith. Only the head, the lower arms, the hands and the feet were of marble. The rest of the statue, the parts covered by clothing, was probably made as a wooden frame covered with bronze or plaster. It seems the statue wore a crown or some other headgear, but nothing remains. The pieces of the statue were found in 1486 in the W. apse of the basilica, where it stood in antiquity. They have been in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori since. text from: sights.seindal.dk/sight/921_Colossal_Statue_of_Constantin...

The remains of the Colossal Statue of Constantine I in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill are from the Basilica of Constantine in the Forum Romanum. The Basilica of Constantine housed the offices of the Prefect of the City, the highest ranking imperial official during the reign of Constantine the Great, and the colossal statue stood in the W. apse of the basilica. Constantine appeared seated, with a globe in one hand and the other hand raised in salute. The statue was an acrolith. Only the head, the lower arms, the hands and the feet were of marble. The rest of the statue, the parts covered by clothing, was probably made as a wooden frame covered with bronze or plaster. It seems the statue wore a crown or some other headgear, but nothing remains. The pieces of the statue were found in 1486 in the W. apse of the basilica, where it stood in antiquity. They have been in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori since. text from: sights.seindal.dk/sight/921_Colossal_Statue_of_Constantin...

The remains of the Colossal Statue of Constantine I in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill are from the Basilica of Constantine in the Forum Romanum. The Basilica of Constantine housed the offices of the Prefect of the City, the highest ranking imperial official during the reign of Constantine the Great, and the colossal statue stood in the W. apse of the basilica. Constantine appeared seated, with a globe in one hand and the other hand raised in salute. The statue was an acrolith. Only the head, the lower arms, the hands and the feet were of marble. The rest of the statue, the parts covered by clothing, was probably made as a wooden frame covered with bronze or plaster. It seems the statue wore a crown or some other headgear, but nothing remains. The pieces of the statue were found in 1486 in the W. apse of the basilica, where it stood in antiquity. They have been in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori since. text from: sights.seindal.dk/sight/921_Colossal_Statue_of_Constantin...

Boy with Thorn, also called Fedele (Fedelino) or Spinario, is a Greco-Roman Hellenistic Bronze sculpture of a boy with a thorn in his foot, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome with a copy in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_with_Thorn

The bronze Capitoline Wolf (Italian: Lupa Capitolina) is a 5th century BC Etruscan statue located in Rome, Italy. Iconic of the city's founding, the Capitoline Wolf has been housed since 1473 inside the Museo Nuovo in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio (known in ancient times as Capitoline Hill). It depicts a she-wolf suckling a pair of human twin infant boys, representing the legendary founders of the city of Rome, Romulus and Remus. According to the founding myth, the twins' grandfather Numitor was overthrown by his brother Amulius, who ordered them to be cast into the River Tiber. They were rescued by a she-wolf who cared for them until a herdsman, Faustulus, found and raised them. The Etruscan bronze is dated stylistically about 500-480 BC. The bronze figures of the twins were added in the late fifteenth century, perhaps by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, in accordance with the story of Romulus and Remus. The bronze wolf was said to have been unearthed under the northwest spur of Palatine Hill, and was noted at the Lateran Palace from the beginning of the 9th century. In the 10th century Chronicon of Benedict of Soracte, the monk chronicler writes of the institution of a supreme court of justice "in the Lateran palace, in the place called [graffiti], viz, the mother of the Romans." Trials and executions "at the Wolf" are recorded from time to time until 1450. It was removed to the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio in 1473, by order of Sixtus IV. She appeared in a woodcut illustration of Mirabilia Urbis Romae (Rome, 1499) already with the infant twins. The image was favored by Benito Mussolini who cast himself as the founder of the "New Rome". To encourage American goodwill, he sent several copies of the Capitoline Wolf to American cities. In 1929 he sent one replica for a Sons of Italy national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was switched for another one in 1931, which still stands in Eden Park, Cincinnati. Another replica was given by Mussolini to the city of Rome, Georgia the same year. A third copy went to New York. The Capitoline Wolf was used on both the emblem and the poster for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. The programme of conservation undertaken in the 1990s resulted in an exhibition devoted to the Lupa Capitolina and her iconography. Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitoline_Wolf

The Dying Gaul (in Italian: Galata Morente) is an ancient Roman marble copy of a lost ancient Greek statue, thought to have been executed in bronze, that was commissioned some time between 230 BC and 220 BC by Attalos I of Pergamon to honor his victory over the Galatians. The present base was added after its rediscovery. The identity of the statue's sculptor is unknown but it has been suggested that Epigonus, the court sculptor of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon, may have been its author. The statue depicts a dying Celt with remarkable realism, particularly in the face, and may have been painted. He is represented as a Gallic warrior with a typically Gallic hairstyle and moustache. The figure is naked save for a neck torc. He is shown fighting against death, refusing to accept his fate. The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus demonstrating the might of the people that defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. If we discount that it may merely mirror heroic nudity elsewhere in Hellenistic art, it may also provide evidence to corroborate ancient accounts of the Gallic fighting style - historians recorded that the Gaesates fought naked in the battles in the Po valley in Italy in the Cisalpine War, Julius Caesar records in his account of the Gallic War that the Gauls went into battle naked save for their weapons and Diodorus Siculus.30 reports other instances of such combat: "Some use iron breast-plates in battle, while others fight naked, trusting only in the protection which nature gives. However, the depiction of this Gaul as naked may also be to lend him the dignity of heroic nudity as seen in depictions of Greek heroes, rather than as a journalistic depiction of actual nudity in combat. The Dying Gaul became one of the most celebrated works to have survived from antiquity and was endlessly copied and engraved by artists and sculptors. It is thought to have been rediscovered in the early 17th century during excavations for the foundations of the Villa Ludovisi and was first recorded in 1623 in the collections of the powerful Ludovisi family of Rome. It shows signs of having been repaired, with the head seemingly having been broken off at the neck, though it is unclear whether the repairs were carried out in Roman times or after the statue's 17th century rediscovery. The artistic quality and expressive pathos of the statue aroused great admiration among the educated classes in the 17th and 18th centuries and was a "must-see" sight on the Grand Tour of Europe undertaken by young men of the day. Byron was one such visitor, commemorating the Dying Gaul in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (canto 4, stanzas 140-141). It was widely copied, with kings, academics and wealthy landowners commissioning their own reproductions of the Dying Gaul (eg the black marble copy in the Robert Adam entrance hall of Syon House). The less well-off could purchase copies of the statue in miniature for use as ornaments and paperweights. More basic, full-size plaster copies were also studied by arts students during this period (the Royal Academy in London had one such, now at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and also an echorche in this pose, moulded from the body of a dead smuggler and hence nicknamed the "smugglerius"). During this period, some misinterpreted the statue's theme as representing a defeated gladiator, leading to the coining of several (entirely erroneous) alternative names for the statue: the 'Dying' or 'Wounded Gladiator', 'Roman Gladiator', and 'Murmillo Dying'. It has also been called the 'Dying Trumpeter'. It was requisitioned by Napoleon Bonaparte by terms of the Treaty of Campoformio (1797) during his invasion of Italy and taken in triumph to Paris, where it was put on display. It was returned to Rome in 1815 and is currently on display in the Capitoline Museums. Copies of the statue can be seen in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University, Leinster House in Dublin Ireland, as well as in Berlin, Prague and Stockholm. In t

Bust of Medusa - Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598-Rome 1680) 5th decade of the 17th century White marble: 50 x 41 x 38 centimetres Small spool-shaped pedestal in portoro marble: height 18 cm, diameter 20 cm 18th century base in coloured marble veneer; from the bottom upwards antique grey, African marble, proconnesus, antique yellow, antique green, Caria red, alpine green; inscribed on the marble on the left side: the coat-of-arms of the Senate and Roman People; on the right side: the Bichi coat-of-arms; inscribed in capital letters on the front side: “MEDUSAE IMAGO IN CLYPEIS / ROMANORUM AD HOSTIUM / TERROREM OLIM INCISA / NUNC CELEBERRIMI / STATUARIJ GLORIA SPLENDET / IN CAPITOLIO / MUNUS MARCH: / FRANCISCI BICHI CONS: / MENSE MARTIJ / ANNO D / MDCCXXXI.” “The head of Medusa, in ancient times used as ornamentation on the shields of the Romans to terrorize their enemies, today shines brightly in the Capitol in glory of the renowned sculptor, donated by Marquis Francesco Bichi, Conservator in the month of March in the year of the Lord 1731.” Provenance: gift of the Marquis Francesco Bichi, Conservator of the first trimester of the year1731; The Bust of Medusa and the base are documented in the Sala delle Oche since 1734, inventory S/1166. Medusa and Bernini In the Metamorphoses, Ovid narrates that Medusa, the most beautiful and deadly of the Gorgons, had the power to turn to stone anyone who dared gaze into her eyes. By surprising her in her sleep, Perseus was able to cut off her head while looking at her reflection in the bronze shield given to him by Minerva. The hero, after having freed Andromeda and defeated Phineus thanks to the still intact petrifying power of Medusa, he gave the head to Minerva who used it to adorn her aegis, and then her shield, as a terrifying weapon to defeat the enemies of reason and knowledge, virtues that she embodied. This very ancient use led to the custom, started in the Renaissance, of decorating battle and parade shields with the Head of Medusa as a weapon to terrorise enemies, but also as a symbol of the virtue and wisdom of whoever held the shield. Disregarding the depiction of the head of the Medusa proposed by classical sculpture, Renaissance and Mannerism, so skilfully revived in the last decade of the 16th century in Rome by Caravaggio, in the parade shield painted for cardinal Del Monte, later donated to the Grand Duke Fernando de’Medici and by Annibale Carracci in the frescoes painted between 1598 and 1601 in the Galleria of Palazzo Farnese, Bernini sculpted a true bust - portrait of Medusa, alive, caught in a transitory moment of unique “metamorphosis”. The myth narrated by Ovid, wherein the beautiful blonde hair of Medusa is transformed into horrible serpents by Minerva as a punishment for having had an intercourse with Neptune in the Temple of the female divinities of Faith and Truth, is revisited in a completely original manner in the eyes of the poet Giovan Battista Marino. In a well-known madrigal taken from La Galeria (1620, I, 272), the poet pretends that it is a wonderful statue of Medusa that is speaking:"(…) Non so se mi scolpì scarpel mortale, / o specchiando me stessa in chiaro vetro / la propria vista mia mi fece tale". (“I don’t know if a mortal chisel sculpted me /or whether by looking at myself in clear glass/ the very sight of myself made me this way.”) The classical myth is overturned to exalt the virtue of the unknown sculptor: it isn't the Gorgon who petrifies her enemies with her gaze, but it is Medusa herself, by making the fatal error of looking at her image in a mirror, who seems to have transformed herself into marble. Considered by the critics as one of the most problematic works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, it was probably created in the first years of the papacy of Innocent X Pamphilj, between 1644 and 1648, when the artist was sent away from the papal court because he was a favourite of the Barberini and at a time when his fame had been temporarily diminished on account of the professional humiliation caused by the demolition of the

Statue of Eros Stringing his Bow Marble cm 123 inv. MC0410 From an original by Lysippos Formerly at Villa d'Este. Benedict XIV donation (1753)

Statue of a Young Girl with a Dove Marble cm 95 inv. MC0738 From a Hellenistic original of the 3rd-2nd century BC Albani Collection

Statue of a Wounded Amazon Marble cm 197 inv. MC0733 From an original by Phidias. Head: replica of that of the Amazon by Polykleitos Formerly at Villa d'Este

Capitoline She-wolf Sculpture 5th century BC or medieval Bronze cm 75 The She-wolf, with its evocative power, is the symbol of the city. The sondation of Sixtus IV brought the statue to the Capitoline Hill. Initially, it stood in the fifteenth century facade of the palace. Then, it was transferred inside the palace, on the occasion of Michelangelo's architectural interventions. At that time, the twins were added, attributed to some by Pollaiolo. They transformed the ancient Lateran symbol of justinc into "Mater Romanorum". Acquisition data: Formerly at the Lateran. Sixtus IV donation (1471) Inventory: inv. MC1181 Text from: en.museicapitolini.org/percorsi/percorsi_per_sale/apparta...

Capitoline She-wolf Sculpture 5th century BC or medieval Bronze cm 75 The She-wolf, with its evocative power, is the symbol of the city. The sondation of Sixtus IV brought the statue to the Capitoline Hill. Initially, it stood in the fifteenth century facade of the palace. Then, it was transferred inside the palace, on the occasion of Michelangelo's architectural interventions. At that time, the twins were added, attributed to some by Pollaiolo. They transformed the ancient Lateran symbol of justinc into "Mater Romanorum". Acquisition data: Formerly at the Lateran. Sixtus IV donation (1471) Inventory: inv. MC1181 Text from: en.museicapitolini.org/percorsi/percorsi_per_sale/apparta...

Cow Copy after the famous bronze statue by Myron (460-440 BC) that, according to sources, once stood on the Athenian acropolis. From the Horti Tauriani, near the church of S. Eusebio (1875) Inventory # 921 Pentelic marble Text from the Capitoline Museum label.

Female Statue From the Horti Tauriani, found in 1875 Pentelic marble Inventory # MC 1125 From an original of the school of Praxiteles dating back to the 4th century BC. Text from the Capitoline Museum label.