Capitoline Wolf (c1100). Bronze. 75. The Capitoline Wolf is a bronze sculpture depicting a scene from the legend of the founding of Rome. The sculpture shows a she-wolf suckling the mythical twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. According to the legend, when King Numitor, grandfather of the twins, was overthrown by his brother Amulius in Alba Longa, the usurper ordered them to be cast into the Tiber River. They were rescued by a she-wolf who cared for them until a herdsman, Faustulus, found and raised them. The age and origin of the Capitoline Wolf are controversial. The statue was long thought to be an Etruscan work of the 5th century BC, with the twins added in the late 15th century AD, probably by the sculptor Antonio Pollaiolo. However, radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating has found that the wolf portion of the statue is likely to have been cast between 1021 and 1153. The image of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus is a symbol of Rome since ancient times and one of the most recognizable icons of ancient mythology. The sculpture has been housed since 1471 in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio, Rome, Italy, and there are many replicas in various places around the world. The sculpture is somewhat larger than life-size, standing 75 centimetres high and 114 centimetres long. The wolf is depicted in a tense, watchful pose, with alert ears and glaring eyes which are watching for danger. By contrast, the human twins-executed in a completely different style-are oblivious to their surroundings, absorbed by their suckling. The she-wolf from the legend of Romulus and Remus was regarded as a symbol of Rome from ancient times. Several ancient sources refer to statues depicting the wolf suckling the twins. Livy reports in his Roman history that a statue was erected at the foot of the Palatine Hill in 295 B.C. Pliny the Elder mentions the presence in the Roman Forum of a statue of a she-wolf that was a miracle proclaimed in bronze nearby, as though she had crossed the Comitium while Attus Navius was taking the omens. Cicero also mentions a statue of the she-wolf as one of a number of sacred objects on the Capitoline that had been inauspiciously struck by lightning in the year 65 BC: it was a gilt statue on the Capitol of a baby being given suck from the udders of a wolf. Cicero also mentions the wolf in De Divinatione 1.20 and 2.47. It was widely assumed that the Capitoline Wolf was the very sculpture described by Cicero, due to the presence of damage to the sculpture's paw, which was believed to correspond to the lightning strike of 65 BC. The 18th-century German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann attributed the statue to an Etruscan maker in the 5th century BC, based on how the wolf's fur was depicted. It was first attributed to the Veiian artist Vulca, who decorated the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and then re-attributed to an unknown Etruscan artist of approximately 480-470 BC. Winckelmann correctly identified a Renaissance origin for the twins; they were probably added in 1471 or later. During the 19th century, a number of researchers questioned Winckelmann's dating of the bronze. August Emil Braun, the secretary of the Archaeological Institute of Rome, proposed in 1854 that the damage to the wolf's paw had been caused by an error during casting. Wilhelm Fruhner, the Conservator of the Louvre, stated in 1878 that style of the statue was attributable to the Carolingian art period rather than the Etruscan, and in 1885 Wilhelm von Bode also stated that he was of the view that the statue was most likely a mediaeval work. However, these views were largely disregarded and had been forgotten by the 20th century. In 2006, the Italian art historian Anna Maria Carruba and the Etruscologist Adriano La Regina contested the traditional dating of the wolf on the basis of an analysis of the casting technique. Carruba had been given the task of restoring the sculpture in 1997, enabling her to examine how it had been made. She observed that the statue had been cast in a single piece, using a variation of the lost-wax casting technique. This technique was not used in Classical antiquity; ancient Greek and Roman bronzes were typically constructed from multiple pieces, a method that facilitated high-quality castings, with less risk than would be involved in casting the entire sculpture at once. Single-piece casting was, however, widely used in the Middle Ages to mould bronze items that needed a high level of rigidity, such as bells and cannons. Carruba argues, like Braun, that the damage to the wolf's paw had resulted from an error in the moulding process.