A huge statue of the hand of Constantine the Great in Rome has been reunited with its missing finger after more than 500 years. Its foot-long index finger was remounted on the stature.
The finger was found in the Louvre in Paris in 2018. The louvre had mistakenly categorised the finger as a toe until Aurélia Azéma, established that it was the long-lost digit from the hand of the Roman emperor’s 12m-high (39ft) statue, fragments of which had been kept at the Capitoline Museums. Azéma, a doctoral student, made the discovery during her research into ancient welding techniques for large bronze statues. She realised that the fractured finger would fit a statue around 12m tall, leading to the theory that it may be Constantine’s missing index figure.
A replica of the finger was 3D-printed by the Louvre’s archaeologist, Nicolas Melard, and brought to Rome that same year by museum curators. There, it proved a perfect fit.
The finger had been among a collection of relics acquired by the Louvre from 19th-century Italian banker and art collector Giampietro Campana in 1863. During his lifetime the businessman became famous throughout Europe for his collection of thousands of Greek and Roman sculptures, paintings, and antiquities.
Among the fragments of the statue on display at the Capitoline Museums are a massive head, a left forearm and sphere. The hand is also missing its palm, which held the sphere, and part of its middle finger. The index finger is believed to have come off when the sphere was separated from the hand and placed on top of a column standing at the first mile of the Appian Way, the earliest and most important road of the Roman empire, in 1584.
“It’s a good way to mark the reopening of museums,” said Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi. Museums in the Italian capital reopened on Monday after coronavirus restrictions were eased.