Circle of Luigi Valadier

The present bronze is a reduction of one of the most celebrated monuments from antiquity, admired since the early Renaissance and in particular in the 18th century during the Grand Tour. The history of the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius can be traced back to the Middle Ages. It was documented in 1187 in the Lateran Palace, from where it was transferred to the Capitoline Hill by Pope Paul III in 1538 and used by Michelangelo, who designed the marble base, as the focal point of the newly planned piazza.

Reductions of the monument were a favoured subject among the most virtuoso bronze sculptors active in Rome in the second half of the 18th century, like Luigi Valadier (1726-1785), Giovanni Zoffoli (1745-1805) and Francesco Righetti (1738-1819).

RELATED LITERATURE
F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven, 1981, pp. 252, 342, 343, no. 55, fig. 129; A. González-Palacios, L’oro di Valadier. Un genio nella Roma del Settecento, exh. cat. Villa Medici, Rome, 1997, p. 187, no. 63; A. González-Palacios, Luigi Valadier, New York, 2018, p. 355