Scope
Roman sculpture, bronzes and inscriptions, with a strong holding of imperial portraiture.
History of the collection
Sixtus IV gave a group of bronzes — including the she-wolf and the Spinario — to the people of Rome in 1471, and that donation is the reason the Capitoline is called the oldest public collection.
The courtyard arrangement of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, where the Constantine fragments stand, dates from a remodelling of 1567–69 following Michelangelo's design for the piazza.
The equestrian Marcus Aurelius stood on the piazza from 1538 until 1981, when it was moved indoors for conservation and replaced outside by a copy. It survived the melting-down of nearly every other Roman equestrian bronze because it was long believed to represent Constantine.
Collection notes
The Constantine fragments are the platform's clearest case of an identification that took four centuries to settle: found in 1486, attributed to Commodus, and only reassigned to Constantine at the end of the nineteenth century.
Objects in this catalogue
Fragments of the colossal seated statue of Constantine
Record checkedColossal acrolithic statue, surviving as nine marble fragments · Early 4th century CE
Portrait of Hadrian
Record incompleteMarble portrait · 2nd century CE