The Bronze Finger of the Emperor
The Art Newspaper reported that the newly identified finger belongs to the famous bronze statue of
Constantine that once stood in Ancient
Rome at an unknown location. It has long since been torn down, but extensive fragments of the masterpiece are kept in the Capitolini in
Rome. They were donated by a Pope in 1471 with other great works from Ancient
Rome such as the famous She-Wolf. The
head of the giant bronze of
Constantine is almost
intact and it is believed to give a
good likeness of
Constantine I, but some experts claim that the statue represents
his grandson
Constantine II.
The newly identified finger, that was once mistaken for a toe, is 38 cm in length. How the finger arrived at the Louvre from
Rome is something of a mystery. It was first catalogued in 1860 and probably belonged to the ‘
collection of the
Italian Marquis Giampietro
Campana’ , according to the Archaeology Magazine. The object was not registered for many years and it was only in 1913 that it received a reference number and was presumably mislabelled as a toe. No-one suspected that it belonged to the famous bronze statue of Emperor
Constantine in
Rome.
The discovery that the finger was not a toe was due to the
work of
Aurelia Azema. She began ‘ to study the object for her doctorate on ancient welding techniques for the manufacture of large bronze
statues’ . Azema noticed that the length of the object was probably too long for a toe. She then related the length of the finger to the dimensions of the statue of
Constantine, which was an impressive 12 meters tall (39.3 feet). The researcher argued that the bronze object was a missing
index figure from the statue of the renowned Emperor.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/giant-finger-emperor-constantine-found-0010152From the article's picture, I have seen this statue as
Constantius II,
his son.
