In 1849 archaeologists working in a small Trastevere street called Vicolo delle Palme (now called Vicolo dell’Atleta) pulled some extraordinary ancient sculptures out of the ground. Among those artworks was a bronze horse that is thought to be a Greek original dating to either the fifth or the fourth century BC.
For the past 30 years, the horse has been in restoration and has not been on public view. But now, fully groomed and ready to show, the steed has returned to its luxurious stable in the Capitoline Museums. Leaning on its hind legs with its head held back, as if preparing to break into a wild gallop, the horse is one of the few surviving bronze equestrian statues from the ancient Greek world. Its rider was not recovered, though some propose it might have been Alexander the Great.
How did a Greek equestrian statue make its way to Rome? Almost certainly the sculpture was a prize taken from Greece by the ancient Romans - the first antiquers - who knew the value of Classical bronzes. And written records tell us that Rome was full of private and public collections of Greek art that would eclispe even the Met’s newly designed antiquities wing.
While 2500 years is a respectable age for any pony, we should be particularly surprised that this work of art managed to survive Rome’s Middle Ages when it was perfectly common to melt bronze antiquities in order that their metals might be reused. While it is impossible to know what fortunate series of events spared this steed from the melting pot, Rodolfo Lanciani - one of Rome’s most esteemed nineteenth-century archaeologists - proposed that the horse and the other antiquities found alongside it on Vicolo delle Palme had been moved riverside to Trastevere in the late antique period (5th-6th centuries AD) in anticipation of being shipped to the Eastern Empire as the city was being systematically looted. He further suggested that a late antique art lover thwarted the relocation program by hiding the hoard - and that it remained hidden until its rediscovery in 1849.
In his book, Ancient Rome in Light of Recent Discoveries (1898), Lanciani wrote:
In 1849, a few weeks before the storming of Rome by the French army of General Oudinot, under the house No. 17 in the above-mentioned passage, a most remarkable collection of works of art was discovered by mere accident. It included the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus, now in the Braccio Nuovo [of the Vatican], — a marble copy of the bronze original, which stood in front of the baths of Agrippa; the bronze Horse, now in the Palazzo de’ Conservatori [of the Capitoline Museums];… a bronze foot, with a beautifully ornamented shoe, which may possibly have belonged to the rider of the Horse; a bronze Bull, and many other fragments of less importance. Here we have the evidence of a collection of works in metal, stolen from different places, and concealed in that remote corner of Trastevere, in readiness for shipment from the quay of the Tiber, close by.
It’s a romantic point of view - but we like it.
Some great tennis was played in Rome over the course of the past two weeks as the Internazionale d’Italia (the Italian Open Tennis Tournament) took place at the Foro Italico, just north of Rome’s city center.
