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[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/She-wolf_of_Rome.JPG/512px-She-wolf_of_Rome.JPG[/img]She-wolf of Rome [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], by Rosemania (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosemania/5384048970), from Wikimedia CommonsThe famous Capitoline She-Wolf, long thought to be an Etruscan work, has more or less been outed as a medieval work - probably the eleventh or first half of the twelfth century. Here's what led researchers to change their minds about it:
...Yet the sculture's link to antiquity wasn't seriously questioned until the 1997 restoration.At that time, restorer Anna Maria Carruba noticed that the she-wolf was cast as a single unit, a technique typically used in the Middle Ages.On the contrary, ancient bronzes were cast in separate parts, and then brazed together. First used by the Greeks and then adopted by Etruscan and Roman artists, the technique basically consisted of brazing the separate joints using bronze as welding material.After much discussion, Rome's officials decided to carry more in-depth tests to clear any doubt.Using accelerator mass spectrometry, the researchers extracted, analyzed and radiocarbon dated organic samples from the casting process. The results revealed with an accuracy by 95,4 percent that the sculpture was crafted between the 11th and 12th century AD.
Rome Icon Actually Younger Than the CityMind you, as recently as this spring I taught about this work as an Etruscan sculpture dating to around 500 B.C. The joke was on me, I guess.
It is pretty cool, which is undoubtedly what the Romans thought as well of the original upon which the Capitoline work was inevitably based. I think the Capitoline wolf can still be considered important even if it was just a medieval work. The article mentioned how Mussolini liked it, and it probably crafted the views of countless others about what Rome was all about. It's one of those funny things about the history of art and artifacts in which the history of perception of an object is more important than the object itself.
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![[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/She-wolf_of_Rome.JPG/512px-She-wolf_of_Rome.JPG[/img]](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShe-wolf_of_Rome.JPG){kind=link}