It may not be authentic, accurate or very old.
But the colossal statue of a fourth-century emperor, Constantine the Great, is a newly erected monument to Rome if nothing else: a tribute to the greatness of the ancient city and its endless capacity to remake itself.
In this case, the remaking was literal.
Above visitors, the 43-foot seated statue was painstakingly reconstructed by a Madrid-based digital art group, the Factum Foundation, from the 10 known fragments of the original sculpture. The reconstructed statue was placed in a garden at Rome’s Capitoline Museums this week, near the site of the Temple of Zeus, ancient Rome’s most important temple.
“Seeing Constantine, on top of Capitol Hill, looking out over all of Rome, feels extraordinary,” said Adam Lowe, founder of the Factum Foundation, which originally created the statue for a 2022 exhibition at the Prada Foundation in Milan. .
The head and most of the other fragments of the colossal statue were discovered in 1486, in the ruins of a building not far from the Colosseum. They were transferred to what eventually became the Capitol collection, and nine of these ancient fragments—including a monumental head, feet, and hand—are on permanent display in museums.
The fragments found fame from the moment they were excavated, said Salvatore Settis, an archaeologist and one of the curators of the Prada exhibition. “They have been carved by leading artists from the 15th century onwards,” he said, adding that the sculpture also attracted the attention of more modern artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, who famously photographed the pieces in the 1950s.
Five hundred years and many other technological advances later, a team from the Factum Foundation spent three days using photogrammetry, a three-dimensional camera scan, to document the fragments in the Capitol courtyard. Over the course of several months, the high-resolution data became 3D prints, which were used to cast replicas, made of acrylic resin and marble powder.
These were then integrated with other parts of the body – those missing Constantine – constructed after historical research and discussions with curators and experts. A statue of the emperor Claudius as the god Zeus, now on the ancient Roman altar known as the Ara Pacis, was used as a model for the pose and dress, which was originally in bronze.
“Through the evidence of these fragments, working rather like forensics, with all the experts from different disciplines, we were able to create something awe-inspiring,” Mr Lowe said, adding that new technologies offer museums new avenues. research and dissemination.
“We’re not trying to make a fake item,” he added. “We’re trying to build something that inspires you physically and emotionally and stimulates you spiritually.”
Recent study of the statue has shown that the statue of Constantine was itself reconstructed from an existing colossus, possibly depicting Zeus. Unmistakable signs of reworking are particularly present on the face of the colossal statue, according to Claudio Parisi Presicce, Rome’s top municipal art official, director of the Capitoline Museums and an expert on the colossus.
Indeed, some experts speculate that the sculpture was originally the cult statue of a temple dedicated to Zeus – the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus – which would mean that Constantine’s facsimile finally came home.
“We can’t be sure that it is the same statue, but there is some possibility that it was,” Mr. Settis said. Constantine, the first emperor to convert to Christianity, may have specifically chosen a statue of Zeus to transform into his own image. “This is a case,” he said. “It would mark a transition in Western Europe from a pagan empire to a Christian one.”
The statue will be on display in the Capitol grounds until at least the end of 2025, officials said. Where it will go next and whether it will withstand the wear and tear of time better than its broken prototype remain open questions.
But its creators at least tried to make it robust.
“It’s going to be as good as anything out there,” Mr Lowe said. “We hope so. Of course, even at the opening there were pigeons sitting on his head. I’m afraid there’s not much you can do about it.“
