CAPITOLINE BRUTUS

The so-called Capitoline Brutus is a bronze statue with ivory eyes and vitreous paste currently housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The statue is from antiquity, although only the head has been preserved. The statue has been known since the 16th century, and the identification with Lucius Junius Brutus, the mythical founder of the Roman Republic, was established through comparisons with portraits on coins minted in 59 and 43 BC by his alleged descendant Marcus Junius Brutus, the assassin of Caesar. Today, this identification is considered a suggestive hypothesis, although not entirely impossible. During the Napoleonic campaign in Italy in 1797, by order of General Napoleon, the statue was taken to Paris along with other works confiscated through the Treaty of Tolentino, such as the Dying Gaul, the Capitoline Venus, and the Spinario, in the context of Napoleonic confiscations. The statue returned to Rome in 1815 and has since been exhibited in the Capitoline Museums, where it is preserved thanks to the intervention of Canova after the Congress of Vienna.