Pointing The Finger

The Campana art collection was assembled in Italy, acquired by Napoleon III, and then dispersed among the museums of France, including the Louvre, and also the Hermitage in Russia; Dalu Jones traces its journey.

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Last May the international media broadcast the news of a singular and bizarre discovery of a huge (38cm long, 14cm wide), long-forgotten, bronze index finger (1) of uncertain date that had been in the basement of the Louvre in Paris. And, at last, the curators had found the original massive hand to which it belonged: the left hand (with its index finger missing) of a fragmented bronze statue 10m to 12m tall – five times the height of a human – of Emperor Constantine (AD 272–337), in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. Here, other surviving fragments of Constantine’s statue, including the emperor’s head and a globe, are displayed. These are known to us through detailed records from the 12th century onwards. What is puzzling is that the medieval texts and drawings describe the emperor’s left or right hand (with all the fingers in place) holding a big globe.

The head and the hand with globe were displayed in front of the Lateran, the original papal seat in Rome, on top of two marble columns. The donation, in 1471, by Pope Sixtus IV (r 1471–84) of the Lateran collection of ancient bronzes – including the famous she-wolf, the city’s emblem – to the people of Rome meant that they were then displayed on the Capitoline Hill, the seat of Rome’s civic government.

Later they would be housed in the Capitoline Museums, opened to the public in 1734 by Pope Clement XII, the first museum complex in the world, allowing works of art to be enjoyed not only by their owners but by visitors.