The Borghese Gladiator

Description

This object was part of a collection of small bronzes belonging to Louis XIV. André Le Nôtre, the gardener of Versailles, may have given this bronze to the King as a gift in 1693.
The statuette, probably cast in the Florentine studio of GianFrancesco Susini, is a very small-scale copy of one of the most famous antique sculptures in the 17th century, the “Borghese Gladiator”, at present in the Louvre.
This monumental figure of a fighting hero was discovered in Italy at the beginning of the 17th century. It bears, in Greek letters, the signature of the sculptor who practised his art around the year 100 B.C.