If you are a fan of the secret history you'll love this scolpture.
The dying Galata we know today is a Roman marble copy of a Greek work. The original, probably bronze, was part, with suicidal Galata, of the grandiose donary that, in 223 a. C., the sovereign Attalus I commissioned to celebrate his victory over the Galatians (the name that the Greeks attributed to the Celts), invaders of Asia Minor, to be placed on the Acropolis of Pergamon and precisely in the sanctuary of Athena Nikephòros. The realization of the work is probably to be attributed to the Greek sculptor Epigonos, during the excavations inside the sanctuary fragments of inscriptions were found including one with the signature of the sculptor.
The dying Galata was and is one of the best-known sculptural works of antiquity and, for this reason, was often taken up and cited by many artists of later periods. This version was discovered at the beginning of the seventeenth century, during the excavations of Villa Ludovisi. The first evidence of the discovery dates back to 1623, when the work was registered as part of the collection of the family.
The artist's mastery and the pathos of sculpture aroused great admiration among art lovers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many nobles commissioned a copy for their private collections. Many believed it was a dying gladiator, an interpretation that caused many incorrect names (including the dying Gladiator, the wounded Caradiator, the dying Mirmidone).
Elements that characterize the Celtic origin are mainly the torques, the typical necklace in vogue among the warriors, the mustache, the shaggy hair kept together with a mix of plaster and water, and the nudity, characteristic that strongly identify the fighting methods of this people.
The warrior awaits the imminent death caused by a wound on the lower part of the chest, caused by a slit. From the wound blood is coming out.
The Galata is half-lying on an oval-shaped plinth on which appear some decidedly and culturally connotative armaments of Gallic origin: a sword, a sheath with a lower relief, a ribbon belt with a square buckle, a broken horn and part of another horn. The left leg is slightly elongated, while the right one is flexed. Only the support of the right arm ensures the balance of the sculpture. The left arm is, in fact, bent and the hand rests on the right thigh. The torso is flexed and rotated to the right, photographed in the preparatory instant that precedes a last desperate attack, an element that accentuates its realistic suggestion, also underlined by the rounded back.
The statue has been considered in the past centuries one of the masterpieces of the so-called ''baroque,', Hellenistic. The right arm, sometimes considered to be of sixteenth-century restoration, is instead ancient, of the same Asian marble of the whole statue.
We think we have so many copies because Iulius Ceasar wanted copies of the same statues of the donary after his victory on the Galli after 50ac ca.
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