The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 64
fig. 2
David Beck
Queen Christina of Sweden, c. 1650,
oil on copper
Stockholm, Livrustkammaren
(Royal Armoury)
would thus remain in Rome. She heeded Maratta’s advice, but, as a result of a
series of hereditary successions, this did not save the Castor and Pollux from being
sold, in 1724, to King Philip V of Spain. The monarch chose to display it in his
country palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso, where it remained until 1839, when
it was moved to the Prado (for a detailed account see Haskell and Penny 1981,
p. 173).
In 1638 the French painter François Perrier included the Castor and Pollux in
his anthology of the most admired statues in Rome (Segmenta nobilium signorum
et statuarum …, Rome, pl. XXXVII; fig. 3). He captioned the illustration ‘Decii
sese pro patria devoventes’, believing the statue to represent the Roman Consul
Publius Decius and his son, who swore an oath to protect Rome and sacrificed
their lives in battle against the enemy, as recounted by the Augustan historian Livy.
A 1633 inventory, however, describes the marble as depicting Castor and Pollux,
the identification that has traditionally remained the most widely accepted. The
two were the twin sons of Leda from different fathers, Tyndareus, King of Sparta,
and Zeus, King of Olympus. Together, they came to be known as the Dioscuri.
