Colossus of Barletta

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Colossus of Barletta
The Colossus of Barletta is a large bronze statue of an Eastern Roman Emperor,
nearly three times life size (5.11 meters, or about 16 feet 7 inches) and currently
located in Barletta, Italy.

The statue reportedly washed up on a shore, after a Venetian ship sank returning
from the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, but it is not
impossible that the statue was sent to the West much earlier. The identity of the
Emperor is uncertain. According to tradition, it depicts Heraclius (reign 610-641 AD);
though this is most unlikely on historical and art-historical grounds. More likely
subjects are Theodosius II (reign 408-450 AD), who may have had it erected in
Ravenna in 439, Honorius (reign 393-423 AD), Valentinian I (r. 364-375), Marcian (r.
450-457), Justinian I (r. 527-565) and especially Leo I the Thracian (r. 457-474).

It is known that a colossal statue was discovered in 1231-1232 during excavations

commissioned by Emperor Frederick II in Ravenna, and is not improbable that he
had it transported to his southern Italian lands. The first certain news about the
statue date however from 1309, when parts of its legs and arms were used by local
Dominicans to cast bells. The missing parts were remade in the 15th century.

The statue evidently depicts a bearded emperor, identifiable from his imperial
diadem and his commanding gesture that invokes the act of delivering a speech,
with his right arm raised, holding a cross. The Emperor wears a cuirass over his
short tunic. His cloak is draped over his left arm in a portrait convention that goes
back to Augustus. In his outstretched left hand he now holds an orb. His diademed
head wears a Gothic jewel, similar to the one worn by Aelia Eudoxia, mother of
Theodosius II.

See also[edit]
Regisole, a now lost equestrian statue originally from Ravenna.

Further reading[edit]
Franklin Johnson: The Colossus of Barletta. In: American Journal of Archaeology 29,
1925, pp. 20ff.
Tomie Di Paola. The Mysterious Giant of Barletta: An Italian Folktale (Voyager Books)
(ISBN - 0152563490)
Weitzmann, Kurt, ed., Age of spirituality : late antique and early Christian art, third
to seventh century, no. 23, 1979, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, ISBN
9780870991790; full text available online from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Libraries
External links[edit]
Late Antiquity: Imperial Image