Written descriptions of the fragmented monument first appear in the mid-12th century, when the pieces were still housed in the papal collections, according to the museum statement. Of the original structure, only the head, the sphere, the left forearm, the hand that held the sphere and a few fingers have survived to the present day.ĭopo quasi 500 anni grazie alla sinergia tra e il è stata ricomposta la mano della statua colossale in bronzo di Costantino, con il frammento del dito della Collezione Campana che è stato finora a Parigi: /EHvJ9iqPm2- Virginia Raggi April 29, 2021Īs the Art Newspaper notes, the statue depicts Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity, or his third son and successor, Constantius II. It stood about 39 feet tall, sporting a now-lost crown and holding a large sphere in its hand, per the Art Newspaper. The emperor’s bronze likeness dates to the early fourth century A.D. (Popular lore suggests that Rome’s founders, twins Romulus and Remus, were abandoned as infants on the banks of the Tiber River and raised by wolves.) Sixtus’ gift also included the Capitoline She-Wolf, a massive bronze sculpture of a wolf nursing two human babies.
According to the Capitoline Museums’ website, the donation is considered the “foundation” of the Italian cultural institution. She added that the event took place on the 550th anniversary of a key donation: In 1471, Pope Sixtus IV gifted several major ancient bronze works-including this statue of Constantine-to the people of Rome. “After almost 500 years, thanks to synergy with the Louvre Museum, the hand of the colossal bronze statue of Constantine has been reassembled,” said Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, during the ceremony, as quoted by Italian news agency ANSA and translated via Google Translate. When curators placed the fiberglass model on the original hand, the two objects fit together seamlessly, leaving no doubt that the mislabeled “toe” was the missing digit in question.
They then created an exact fiberglass replica of the missing phalange. The missing digit spent more than a century mislabeled as a toe.Īccording to a statement, researchers Françoise Gaultier and Claudio Parisi Presicce confirmed Azéma’s hunch by analyzing a 3-D model of the Louvre finger. In 2018, Azéma was studying ancient welding techniques when she realized that the severed finger matched the casting method and approximate size of the Capitoline Museums’ bronze emperor. It wasn’t until more than 100 years later that an eagle-eyed researcher, Aurélia Azéma, realized the object’s true origins. In 1913, curators mistakenly classified the digit as a “Roman toe,” wrote Vincent Noce for the Art Newspaper in 2018. The missing digit had resided in France since the 1860s, when prominent Italian art collector Giampietro Campana donated it and other prized antiquities to the Louvre. Museum director Claudio Parisi Presicce tells Italian newspaper Il Messaggerothat the long-lost bronze digit was reunited with the emperor’s hand “using a non-invasive, reversible and invisible system,” per the Guardian. This week, Rome’s Capitoline Museums announced that a giant bronze sculpture thought to depict the emperor Constantine was recently reunited with one of its missing pieces: namely, its enormous, 14.9-inch-long index finger.Ĭurators reattached the finger, which had previously been housed at Paris’ Louvre Museum, during a ceremony at the Capitoline Museums on Wednesday, reports Angela Giuffrida for the Guardian. After 500 years, scholars have finally solved a jigsaw puzzle of colossal proportions.
0 kommentar(er)
