Capitoline Wolf - Attribution and Dating

Attribution and Dating

The she-wolf from the legend of Romulus and Remus was regarded as a symbol of Rome from ancient times. Several ancient sources refer to statues depicting the wolf suckling the twins. Pliny the Elder mentions the presence in the Roman Forum of a statue of a she-wolf that was "a miracle proclaimed in bronze nearby, as though she had crossed the Comitium while Attus Navius was taking the omens". Cicero also mentions a statue of the she-wolf as one of a number of sacred objects on the Capitoline that had been inauspiciously struck by lightning in the year 65 BC: "it was a gilt statue on the Capitol of a baby being given suck from the udders of a wolf." Cicero also mentions the wolf in De Divinatione 1.20 and 2.47.

It was widely assumed that the Capitoline Wolf was the very sculpture described by Cicero, due to the presence of damage to the sculpture's paw, which was believed to correspond to the lightning strike of 65 BC. The 18th-century German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann attributed the statue to an Etruscan maker in the 5th century BC, based on how the wolf's fur was depicted. It was first attributed to the Veiian artist Vulca, who decorated the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and then re-attributed to an unknown Etruscan artist of approximately 480-470 BC. Winckelmann correctly identified a Renaissance origin for the twins; they were probably added in 1471 or later.

During the 19th century a number of researchers questioned Winckelmann's dating of the bronze. August Emil Braun, the secretary of the Archaeological Institute of Rome, proposed in 1854 that the damage to the wolf's paw had been caused by an error during casting. Wilhelm Fröhner, the Conservator of the Louvre, stated in 1878 that style of the statue was attributable to the Carolingian period rather than the Etruscan, and in 1885 Wilhelm von Bode also stated that he was of the view that the statue was most likely a medieval work. However, these views were largely disregarded and had been forgotten by the 20th century.

In 2006 the Italian art historian Anna Maria Carruba and the Etruscologist Adriano La Regina contested the traditional dating of the wolf on the basis of an analysis of the casting technique. Carruba had been given the task of restoring the sculpture in 1997, enabling her to examine how it had been made. She observed that the statue had been cast in a single piece using a variation of the lost-wax casting technique that was not used in ancient times; ancient Greek and Roman bronzes were typically constructed from multiple pieces, a method that facilitated high quality castings with less risk than would be involved in casting the entire sculpture at once. Single-piece casting was, however, widely used in medieval times to mould bronze items that needed a high level of rigidity, such as bells and cannon. Carruba argues, like Braun, that the damage to the wolf's paw had resulted from an error in the moulding process. In addition, La Regina, who is the state superintendent of Rome's cultural heritage, argues that the sculpture's artistic style is more akin to Carolingian and Romanesque art than that of the ancient world.

Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating was carried out at the University of Salento in February 2007 to resolve the question. In July 2008, La Regina announced that the results of the tests had produced a "very precise indication in the 13th century". The official results of the investigation were not to be disclosed before the end of 2008, but have, as of May 2012, not yet been published by the Museo Nuovo.