Dying Gladiator
Sabatino de Angelis (b.1838)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1840 - 1915
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
140 x 280 x 140 mm
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 850847
Summary
Bronze sculpture on black marble plinth on oval base, Dying Gladiator by Sabatino de Angelis (b.1838). The bronze original was part of the great ex-voto which Attalus I (241-197 B.C.) set up at Pergamum after his victories over the Galatians. The statuette is a copy after the antique, the Roman original of which was first recorded in a inventory of the Ludovisi collection in Rome, 1623 and some time before 1737 it was acquired by Pope Clement XII (1730 - 40) for the Capitoline Museum where it now remains, although it spent some time in France between 1798 until 1816. Apart from many plaster casts it was famously cast in bronze by Luigi Valadier for the Duke of Northumberland at Syon House in 1773 and smaller bronzes had been made in the 17th century by Gianfrancesco Susini and Zoffoli in the 18th century. The pathos was immortalised in the fourth canto of Lord Byon's poem Childe Harold (1818): 'I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leaned upon his hand - his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony. And his droped head sinks gradually low - ...'
Provenance
Part of the Bristol Collection. Acquired by the National Trust in 1956 under the auspices of the National Land Fund, later the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
Makers and roles
Sabatino de Angelis (b.1838) , sculptor
References
Haskell and Penny 1981: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500 - 1900, New Haven and London, 1981, 44, fig. 116