Some New Observations on and Reconstruction of the Colossal Statue of Constantine in the Capitoline Museum in Rome
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Abstract
This article reconsiders some of the most important recent scholarship on the recut colossal acrolithic (marble and bronze) statue of Constantine in the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Capitoline Museums in Rome. Discussed in this article are the various past attempts to determine from which previous emperor or divinity the statue might have bene recut and reused in a new setting, as well as past reconstructions of the statue. To this discussion, I offer some new arguments that the statue was recut from an image of the emperor Hadrian, but not the consecrated cult image of him as a deified emperor (divus) that once stood in his temple (Hadrianeum) in the Campus Martius in Rome but rather a non-consecrated statue of him. In addition, I reproduced a new colorized version of what the reworked statue of Constantine would have looked like when first dedicated, based on more recent and plausible reconstructions of the statue that also takes into consideration the materials used for it and its decorations.
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