Italian School

This drawing copies the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus that is part of the antique sculpture of the River God Tiber.¹ The colossal Tiber was excavated in January 1512 near S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, and Pope Julius II moved it to the statue court in the Vatican Belvedere on 2 February 1512. Its counterpart, the Nile, was discovered after 1513, and moved by Pope Leo X to the middle of the courtyard, opposite the Tiber. The two antique sculptures are now separated, as the Tiber was moved to the Louvre, Paris, in 1797. As Enea Vico’s drawings in the Morgan’s collection show, the sculpture groups were damaged and had several losses.² Restoration to both groups is recorded in 1524-25, though these repairs were not exhaustive, and the sculptures received their current form only after 1774 when Gaspare Sibilla was commissioned to restore them.³ Many contemporary draftsmen invented additions to fill in losses to these and other antique statues. In the present drawing, such additions can be seen in the head of the she-wolf, the arm and legs of the putto at left, and the head and arm of the putto at right.

Footnotes:

1. Bober and Rubinstein 2010, 113-14, no. 66.
2. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. IV, 50 and IV, 50a.
3. Brummer 1970, 195.