Statue of the Dying Gaul in the Capitoline Museum, Rome

This statue known as the Galata Morente is a marble Roman copy of an earlier bronze Greek statue commissioned in the third century BC by Attalo I of Pergamo (an ancient city in Anatolia) in order to celebrate his victory against a neighbouring tribe, the Galatians. The statue is remarkable for its realistic depiction of a wounded warrior struggling against death. In the Roman version the dying man is a Gaul who is naked apart from the torc which indicates his noble status. The statue was rediscovered in the early seventeenth century and is one of the most admired works to have survived from the Roman period. It was a prize attraction on the Grand Tour and is now exhibited in the Palazzo Nuovo.

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