Rome's Biggest Statue: Colossal Constantine

Finally we explore the Colossal Constantine now in Rome. 13 meters high. Incredible history. Okay so here we are. Here is the possibly final location for the Colossus of Constantine. It came from Milan. It was in the show about recycled beauty which was absolutely fantastic and I've taken you there. Now here it is in the location of the garden of the Kaplan Museums. Why here? Well because one theory is that this figure of Constantine is a reused figure quite possibly from the occult statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. And where are we right now? We're on the Capitoline Hill on top of the remains the foundations of the Jupiter Optimus Maximus temple last rebuilt by Domitian and of course you can see some of the foundations of the regal period temple inside the Capitoline Museums. So this is giving you a phenomenal opportunity to come to explore the history of these museums but now also to engage in this reconstruction. Why is it so important to come to the Capitoline Museums today? Because you have the original pieces of the Colossal Statue of Constantine in the courtyard in the Palace of the Conservators and now here they've got perfect copies of those fragments and with Factum Arte you have this impressive reconstruction, an idea of what it was originally. Factum Arte has reconstructed the model using 10 original pieces that are in Rome that were found in 1486 and here they are. We can take a look at them one by one and every piece is made of the same Parian marble. First we have the shin and we can see the slots for the structure which would have been inserted into it. Here is the knee. At least one of them. Again we see a huge slot for the structure that would have been made of brick or wood or metal. Here's the grand right forearm with a slot. We can admire this veining on the arms. Here is the left forearm as thus identified. We have the left foot, two pieces. This is one of the standout features of the entire statue. We see it from two different angles and this is the left foot. Here we have the right foot less well preserved but we can admire it from different angles and see behind it that there is a slot again for inserting the superstructure. We have the right hand with a restoration dating to the Renaissance times giving us a straight index figure but through study of the actual hand the archaeologists have reconstructed it as a bent figure that would have been curved around a scepter. Finally we have this tenth piece. It's not been integrated into the model. It does belong to the rest of the statue but we don't know where it was originally placed. This video today is sponsored by Surfshark VPN. Now a VPN is a virtual private network. It keeps you safe. It keeps you private and it masks everything you do online. That's important for me as I travel through the Roman Empire. I mean let's face it I could be anywhere in the Mediterranean. 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Now we look at the face of Constantin and we know it's been recarved. Now on the one hand experts say that the nose, the eyebrows, and part of the hair is original and not recarved but it definitely looks like he's had a shave. So then you lead to the theory that this was originally a colossal statue of a bearded emperor like Hadrian. Another theory, a prevalent theory today, is quite possibly it was a bearded god instead of an emperor leading you to that theory that this was actually a reused cold statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus himself. But what we have here is a celebration, is a triumph of art and technology. Factum Arte on their side with a philological study, with the experts, with the superintendent of Rome working together to understand how to envision the original cult statue. This is an acrolithic cult statue which means that the exposed body parts are made of marble but the superstructure would have been brick, it would have been wood, and rods of metal. And ultimately the 10th piece that was recently identified by the superintendency, discovered in 1951 in the warehouses, in the storerooms of the Colosseum, has now been attributed to this statue which then lends, gives support to the idea that it was a bare chested colossal statue because you have one fragment of the chest with a nipple. So this is a great discovery and that piece is still not on display to the public. It should be brought to the Capitoline Museums to be on permanent display, let's hope so, but the new identification of this piece supports the theory that this was a bare chested Olympic-like figure that we see in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus itself, a copy or reflecting the original Olympian Zeus in Olympia by Phidias. So you have together a triumph of technology and study by art historians and archaeologists to put together, to reassemble, and give the public a reason to get hungry and curious about the ancient world, to be curious and learn more about ancient Rome by coming here to enjoy this colossal statue. Let's take a look at the statue again. Now we know the statues of antiquity were painted, but we don't have any traced elements of the paint on the original pieces. So it's been left unpainted, but we can clearly see then a distinction between the perfect scan of the real pieces with the invented portions of the body. Now we have some scholarly interpretations of this statue, that his finger curled around and held some sort of scepter in the right arm and in the left he was holding a sphere. That's based upon other models that we have that we said before. Now what about the drapery? Here they have a nice gilded bronze effect. That's one interpretation. It could have instead been covered with cloth rather than panels of gilding. We just don't really know. So what we see in the end is an ideal, is an interpretation. And again color has not been added because that would be taking it one step further away than from what we really know it looked like. So this is an astute interpretation. This is a scholarly vision and the use of technology applied to give us that feeling of scale, to give us a feeling of what a colossal statue was like. And in the end, the reality is we can always come back to the original pieces in the same museum. That's the really magnificent thing about this experience now that the colossal statue, reconstructed, is here in the Capitoline Museums. Everyone should check this out. Thanks for watching. Thanks for being part of Darius Aria Digs. See you soon.