The Dying Gaul

Gaul

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

(in Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

: Galata Morente), formerly known as the Dying Gladiator, is an ancient Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

 copy of a lost Hellenistic sculpture that is thought to have been executed in bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

, which was commissioned some time between 230 BC and 220 BC by Attalus I

Attalus I

Attalus I , surnamed Soter ruled Pergamon, an Ionian Greek polis , first as dynast, later as king, from 241 BC to 197 BC. He was the second cousin and the adoptive son of Eumenes I, whom he succeeded, and was the first of the Attalid dynasty to assume the title of king in 238 BC...

 of Pergamon

Pergamon

Pergamon , or Pergamum, was an ancient Greek city in modern-day Turkey, in Mysia, today located from the Aegean Sea on a promontory on the north side of the river Caicus , that became the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon during the Hellenistic period, under the Attalid dynasty, 281–133 BC...

 to celebrate his victory over the Celtic Galatia

Galatia

Ancient Galatia was an area in the highlands of central Anatolia in modern Turkey. Galatia was named for the immigrant Gauls from Thrace , who settled here and became its ruling caste in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC. It has been called the "Gallia" of...

ns in Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

. The present base was added after its rediscovery. The identity of the sculptor of the original is unknown, but it has been suggested that Epigonus

Epigonus

Epigonus of Pergamum was the chief among the court sculptors to the Attalid dynasty at Pergamum in the late third century BCE. Pliny the Elder, who offers the only surviving list of the sculptors of this influential Pergamene school, attributes to him works among the sculptures on the victory...

, the court sculptor of the Attalid dynasty

Attalid dynasty

The Attalid dynasty was a Hellenistic dynasty that ruled the city of Pergamon after the death of Lysimachus, a general of Alexander the Great. The Attalid kingdom was the rump state left after the collapse of the Lysimachian Empire. One of Lysimachus' officers, Philetaerus, took control of the city...

 of Pergamon, may have been its sculptor.

The statue depicts a dying Celt

Celt

The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....

 with remarkable realism, particularly in the face, and may have been painted. He is represented as a Gallic

Gaul

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

 warrior with a typically Gallic hairstyle and moustache. The figure is nude save for a neck torc

Torc

A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large, usually rigid, neck ring typically made from strands of metal twisted together. The great majority are open-ended at the front, although many seem designed for near-permanent wear and would have been difficult to remove. Smaller torcs worn around...

. He lies on his fallen shield while his sword and other objects lie beside him.

The statue was most commonly known as the Dying Gladiator until the twentieth century, on the assumption that it depicted a wounded gladiator in the Roman amphitheatre. Scholars had identified it as a Gaul

Gaul

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

 by the mid nineteenth century, but it took many decades for the new label to become the norm.

Discovery

It is thought to have been rediscovered in the early 17th century during some excavations for the foundations of the Villa Ludovisi

Villa Ludovisi

The Villa Ludovisi was a suburban villa in Rome, built in the 17th century on the area once occupied by the Gardens of Sallust near the Porta Salaria...

 and was first recorded in a 1623 inventory of the collections of the powerful Ludovisi

Ludovisi

Ludovisi can refer to:*Ludovisi , a noble Italian family*Ludovisi, Lazio, a rione in the City of Rome* Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, prince of Venosa and proprietor of Latium wine estate Fiorano...

 family of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. The villa was built in the area of the ancient Gardens of Sallust

Gardens of Sallust

The Gardens of Sallust were Roman gardens developed by the Roman historian Sallust in the 1st century BC. The landscaped pleasure gardens occupied a large area in the northwestern sector of Rome, in what would become Region VI, between the Pincian and Quirinal hills, near the Via Salaria and later...

 where, when the Ludovisi property was built over in the late nineteenth century, many other antiquities were discovered, most notably the "Ludovisi Throne

Ludovisi Throne

The Ludovisi Throne is an ancient sculpted block of white marble hollowed at the back and carved with bas-reliefs on the three outer faces. Its authenticity is debated; the majority, who accept it, place it as Western Greek, from Magna Graecia, and date it–; from the Severe style it manifests,...

". By 1633 it was in the Ludovisi Palazzo Grande on the Pincio. Pope Clement XII

Pope Clement XII

Pope Clement XII , born Lorenzo Corsini, was Pope from 12 July 1730 to 6 February 1740.Born in Florence, the son of Bartolomeo Corsini, Marquis of Casigliano and his wife Isabella Strozzi, sister of the Duke of Bagnuolo, Corsini had been an aristocratic lawyer and financial manager under preceding...

 acquired it for the Capitoline collections

Capitoline Museums

The Capitoline Museums are a group of art and archeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. The museums are contained in three palazzi surrounding a central trapezoidal piazza in a plan conceived by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1536 and executed over...

. As one of the most famous Roman antiquities, it was then taken by Napoleon's forces under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino

Treaty of Tolentino

The Treaty of Tolentino was signed after nine months of negotiations between France and the Papal States on February 19, 1797. It was part of the events following the invasion of Italy in the early stages of the French Revolutionary Wars...

, and displayed with other Italian works of art in the Louvre Museum until 1816, when it was returned to Rome.

Portrayal of Celts

The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus demonstrating the might of the people who defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. The statue may also provide evidence to corroborate ancient accounts of the Gallic fighting style – Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...

 reported that "Some [Gauls] use iron breast-plates in battle, while others fight naked, trusting only in the protection which nature gives." Polybius

Polybius

Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...

 wrote an evocative account of Gaulish tactics against a Roman army at the Battle of Telamon

Battle of Telamon

The Battle of Telamon was fought between the Roman Republic and an alliance of Gauls in 225 BC. The Romans, led by the consuls Gaius Atilius Regulus and Lucius Aemilius Papus, defeated the Gauls, thus extending their influence over northern Italy....

 of 225 BC:

"The Insubres

Insubres

The Insubres were a Gaulish population settled in Insubria, in what is now Lombardy . They were the founders of Milan . Though ethnically Celtic at the time of Roman conquest , they were most likely the result of the fusion of pre-existing Ligurian, Celtic and "Italic" population strata with Gaulish...

 and the Boii

Boii

The Boii were one of the most prominent ancient Celtic tribes of the later Iron Age, attested at various times in Cisalpine Gaul , Pannonia , in and around Bohemia, and Transalpine Gaul...

 wore trousers and light cloaks, but the Gaesatae

Gaesatae

The Gaesatae were a group of Gaulish warriors who lived in the Alps near the river Rhône and fought against the Roman Republic in the Battle of Telamon of 225 BC...

, in their love of glory and defiant spirit, had thrown off their garments and taken up their position in front of the whole army naked and wearing nothing but their arms... The appearance of these naked warriors was a terrifying spectacle, for they were all men of splendid physique and in the prime of life."

Livy recorded that the Celts of Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

 fought naked and their wounds were plain to see on the whiteness of their bodies. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

 regarded this as a foolish tactic: "Our enemies fight naked. What injury could their long hair, their fierce looks, their clashing arms do us? These are mere symbols of barbarian boastfulness."

The depiction of this particular Gaul as naked may also have been intended to lend him the dignity of heroic nudity

Heroic nudity

Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the use of nudity in classical sculpture to indicate that a sculpture's apparently mortal human subject is in fact a hero or semi-divine being. This convention began in archaic and classical Greece and was later adopted...

 or pathetic

Pathos

Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....

 nudity. It was not infrequent for Greek warriors to be likewise depicted as heroic nudes, as exemplified by the pedimental sculptures of the Temple of Aphaea at Aegina

Aegina

Aegina is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, from Athens. Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus, who was born in and ruled the island. During ancient times, Aegina was a rival to Athens, the great sea power of the era.-Municipality:The municipality...

. The message conveyed by the sculpture, as H. W. Janson

H. W. Janson

Horst Waldemar Janson , who published as H. W. Janson, was an American scholar of art history best known for his History of Art, which was first published in 1962 and has sold more than two million copies in fifteen languages.Janson was born in St. Petersburg in 1913 to Friedrich Janson and Helene...

 comments, is that "they knew how to die, barbarians that they were."

Influence

The Dying Gaul became one of the most celebrated works to have survived from antiquity and was engraved and endlessly copied by artists, for whom it was a classic model for depiction of strong emotion, and by sculptors. It shows signs of having been repaired, with the head seemingly having been broken off at the neck, though it is unclear whether the repairs were carried out in Roman times or after the statue's 17th century rediscovery.

During this period, the statue was widely interpreted as representing a defeated gladiator

Gladiator

A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...

, rather than a Gallic warrior. Hence it was known as the 'Dying' or 'Wounded Gladiator', 'Roman Gladiator', and 'Murmillo

Murmillo

The murmillo was a type of gladiator during the Roman Imperial age. The murmillo-class gladiator was adopted in the early Imperial period to replace the earlier Gallus, named after the warriors of Gaul...

 Dying'. It has also been called the 'Dying Trumpeter', because one of the scattered objects lying beside the figure is a horn.

The artistic quality and expressive pathos

Pathos

Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....

 of the statue aroused great admiration among the educated classes in the 17th and 18th centuries and was a "must-see" sight on the Grand Tour

Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

 of Europe undertaken by young men of the day. Byron was one such visitor, commemorating the statue in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks...

:

I see before me the gladiator lie

He leans upon his hand—his manly brow

Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his drooped head sinks gradually low—

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one...

It was widely copied, with kings, academics and wealthy landowners commissioning their own reproductions of the Dying Gaul. The less well-off could purchase copies of the statue in miniature for use as ornaments and paperweights. Full-size plaster copies were also studied by art students.

It was requisitioned by Napoleon Bonaparte by terms of the Treaty of Campoformio (1797) during his invasion of Italy and taken in triumph to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where it was put on display. It was returned to Rome in 1815 and is currently on display in the Capitoline Museums

Capitoline Museums

The Capitoline Museums are a group of art and archeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. The museums are contained in three palazzi surrounding a central trapezoidal piazza in a plan conceived by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1536 and executed over...

.

Copies

Copies of the statue can be seen in the Museum of Classical Archaeology

Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge

The Museum of Classical Archaeology is a museum run by the Faculty of Classics of the University of Cambridge, England. It is located on the Sidgwick Site of the University, north of Sidgwick Avenue....

 at Cambridge University

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, Leinster House

Leinster House

Leinster House is the name of the building housing the Oireachtas, the national parliament of Ireland.Leinster House was originally the ducal palace of the Dukes of Leinster. Since 1922, it is a complex of buildings, of which the former ducal palace is the core, which house Oireachtas Éireann, its...

 in Dublin Ireland, as well as in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, Versaille, Warsaw (Royal Baths Park). In the United States, copies are at the Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma, Washington, and at the Redwood Library, Newport, Rhode Island. The Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 in London had one such copy, now at the Courtauld Gallery in London. It also had an écorché

Écorché

An écorché is a figure drawn, painted, or sculpted showing the muscles of the body without skin. Renaissance architect and theorist, Leon Battista Alberti recommended that when painters intend to depict a nude, they should first arrange the muscles and bones, then depict the overlying...

 in this pose, cast in the late 18th century from the body of an executed smuggler and hence nicknamed "Smugglerius

Smugglerius

Smugglerius is an écorché sculpture of a man posed in imitation of the ancient Roman sculpture known as the Dying Gaul. The original bronze cast was made in 1776 by Agostino Carlini for William Hunter, first Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy Schools, from the body of a muscular criminal,...

". In the English market town

Market town

Market town or market right is a legal term, originating in the medieval period, for a European settlement that has the right to host markets, distinguishing it from a village and city...

 of Brigg

Brigg

Brigg is a small market town in North Lincolnshire, England, with a population of 5,076 in 2,213 households . The town lies at the junction of the River Ancholme and east-west transport routes across northern Lincolnshire...

 in Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, the long established coaching inn

Coaching inn

In Europe, from approximately the mid-17th century for a period of about 200 years, the coaching inn, sometimes called a coaching house or staging inn, was a vital part of the inland transport infrastructure, as an inn serving coach travelers...

 The Dying Gladiator displays a copy, using the old title. The College of Fine Arts in the University of the Philippines Diliman also has a copy, using the old title. There is also a copy at the Hermitage Museum

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

 in St Petersburg, Russia.