The colossus of Constantine finds his hand again (thanks to a fragment from the Louvre)

by time news

Time.news – From today the public of Capitoline Museums will be able to admire the hand of the bronze Colossus of Constantine recomposed with the fragment of the bronze finger, coinciding with the two upper phalanges of an index finger, from the Louvre Museum.

The find is exhibited in theExedra of Marcus Aurelius together with the other bronzes, already in the Lateran, donated to the Roman people by Pope Sixtus IV in 1471. The recomposition of the hand with its fragment, the result of a fruitful collaboration between Roma Culture, the Capitoline Superintendence for Cultural Heritage and the Louvre Museum, takes place on the occasion of the 550 years of the Sistine donation, a real act of foundation of the Capitoline collections, but also almost 500 years after their separation.

The bronze fragment arrived in Paris in 1860 together with a large part of the collection of the Marquis Giampietro Campana, one of the protagonists of the Roman collecting landscape of the central years of the nineteenth century.

© © Musei Capitolini, photo by Zeno Colantoni

Bronze colossus of Constantine

In recent years it has been possible to recognize the pertinence of the fragment to one of the most iconic sculptures of Roman antiquity, the bronze Colossus of Constantine, of which the head, the left hand remain in the Capitoline Museums, with gaps in correspondence of the index finger, the middle finger, the ring finger and the palm, and a sphere once supported by the hand.

The confirmation of the exceptional discovery came in May 2018 thanks to a test carried out in Rome with a 3D model of the Parisian fragment, an operation coordinated by Françoise Gaultier and yes Claudio Parisi Presicce.

The first description of the fragments of Constantine’s bronze colossus dates back to the mid-twelfth century, when they were still in the Lateran. For a long time the statue had been interpreted as a representation of the Sun erected next to the Flavian amphitheater, and therefore called the Colosseum by assimilation with it.

rome recomposed by hand colossus constantine

© © Musei Capitolini, photo by Zeno Colantoni

Bronze colossus of Constantine

The precious materials of the monument have already been mentioned in numerous medieval and fifteenth-century chronicles and descriptions. The hand with the globe (intact) and the head, each placed on a capital, are recognizable in a drawing attributed to Feliciano Felice of 1465, in which stands the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, also located in the Lateran until 1538.

With the transfer to the Capitol in 1471, the colossal head found its place under the arcades of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. The last attestation of the integrity of the hand is documented by sources dating back to the end of the thirties of the sixteenth century.

Graphical testimonies, a little later, show it instead separated from the sphere and with the index finger already without the two upper phalanges. The fragment that had ended up in the Louvre, may have entered the Roman antiques market circuit already at this stage. Nothing else is known about the fragment until its reappearance in the first half of the nineteenth century in the collection of the Marquis Campana.

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