Provenance and identity of a large bronze statue currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pearson, Paul Nicholas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4628-9818 2017. Provenance and identity of a large bronze statue currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Journal of the History of Collections 30 (1) , pp. 35-48. 10.1093/jhc/fhx016

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Abstract

A large bronze statue in the Metropolitan Museum in New York is currently identified as the emperor Trebonianus Gallus. According to an early account, it was excavated with many other statues in the remains of an ancient hall near San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, in the early nineteenth century, but this story has recently been dismissed as probable invention. Here additional information is presented that lends credence to the traditional provenance and supports a proposal that the hall in question may have been in the headquarters of the imperial horseguard. New evidence is presented for the history of the statue, and that the identification as Trebonianus Gallus was made prior to its final sale. However an alternative is proposed which could explain various peculiarities of the piece: the emperor Maximinus I ‘Thrax’, reportedly a physical giant of a man.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Subjects:	A General Works > AM Museums (General). Collectors and collecting (General)
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0954-6650
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	12 May 2017
Date of Acceptance:	12 May 2017
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2023 06:42
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/100547

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