The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 38
This finely cast gilt bronze is closely based on the antique marble Dying Gaul, in the
collection of the Capitoline Museums, Rome (fig. 1). The ancient Roman statue
was first recorded in the 1623 inventory of the Ludovisi collection in Rome, in
which it was described as a dying gladiator; in 1633 the sculpture was in the Palazzo
Grande on the Ludovisi estate on the Pincio (Haskell and Penny 1981, p. 224).
Apart from a short period of time, when it was seized by Don Livio Odescalchi
in payment of a debt, the Dying Gaul remained with the Ludovisi family until
some time before 1737. It was then acquired by Pope Clement XII (1652–1740) for
the Capitoline Museums, where it remained until 1797. It was handed over to the
French under
the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino; following the defeat of Napoleon, it was
returned to Rome in 1816 and re-installed in the Capitoline Museums.
A touching celebration of the potential of the human spirit, the Dying Gaul
portrays a fallen warrior in his final moments, before he dies from the wound
on his chest. For a long time, the sculpture was thought to represent a gladiator
at the point of death. Furthermore, the presence of the broken horn led the
German art historian J.J. Winckelmann to reconsider the true subject of the
statue, proposing that it represented instead a Greek herald (Haskell and Penny
1981, p. 226). It was E.Q. Visconti (1751–1818) who sensibly argued that the ethnic
qualities of the figure suggested he was a barbarian warrior, either a Gaul or a
German, who had heroically died on the battlefield (Haskell and Penny 1981, p.
226). By mid nineteenth century, scholars agreed that it depicted a Gallic warrior;
his moustache, the matted, thick locks of hair, and the torque around his neck
indicated that he belonged to one of the Celtic tribes which the Greeks and
Romans considered barbarians. Since the late nineteenth century, the statue has
been considered to be a copy of a Greek bronze original created in the first half
of the third century bc to commemorate the victories of Attalus I (269–197 bc),
King of Pergamon, over the Gauls (Haskell and Penny 1981, p. 227).
Ever since its discovery, the sculpture enjoyed great popularity among artists
and collectors as its fame spread quickly, thanks to the etching by François Perrier
(1590–1650), published in Rome in 1638. Plaster casts were made for King Philip IV
of Spain (1605–1665) and the French Academy in Rome, followed by a marble copy
carved by Michel Monnier for Louis XIV (1638–1715). Various large-scale copies
were also realised in England – Peter Scheemakers carved one in stone for the
garden at Rousham in Oxfordshire, Simon Vierpyl also carved one in marble for
Lord Pembroke’s Wilton estate in Wiltshire, whilst Luigi Valadier cast it in bronze
for the great hall of Duke of Northumberland’s mansion of Syon. Numerous
other casts in bronze were realised by Gianfrancesco Susini (1585–1653) in the
seventeenth century, followed by Giovanni Zoffoli (c. 1745–1805) in the eighteenth
