History of The Sculpture
It is unclear when the sculpture was first erected, but there are a number of medieval references to a "wolf" standing in the Pope's Lateran Palace. In the 10th century Chronicon of Benedict of Soracte, the monk chronicler writes of the institution of a supreme court of justice "in the Lateran palace, in the place called the Wolf, viz, the mother of the Romans." Trials and executions "at the Wolf" are recorded from time to time until 1438.
The 12th-century English cleric Magister Gregorius wrote a descriptive essay De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae and recorded in an appendix three pieces of sculpture he had neglected: one was the Wolf in the portico at the principal entrance to the Vatican Palace. He mentions no twins, for he noted that she was set up as if stalking a bronze ram that was nearby, which served as a fountain. The wolf had also served as a fountain, Magister Gregorius thought, but it had been broken off at the feet and moved to where he saw it.
The present-day Capitoline Wolf could not have been the sculpture seen by Benedict and Gregorius, if its newly attributed age is accepted, though it is conceivable that it could have been a replacement for an earlier (now lost) depiction of the Roman wolf. In December 1471 Pope Sixtus IV ordered the present sculpture to be transferred to the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill, and the twins were added some time around then. The Capitoline Wolf joined a number of other genuinely ancient sculptures transferred at the same time, to form the nucleus of the Capitoline Museum.
Read more about this topic: Capitoline Wolf
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