Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius (1548): Art, History and Details

Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius (1548) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Nicolas Beatrizet (French, active Italy, 1507 or 1515-about 1565).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

When Michelangelo redesigned the Campidoglio, a civic piazza on top of Capitoline Hill in Rome, he repositioned the ancient Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in the center of the piazza on a newly designed plinth with antique-style lettering. Just after the piazza was completed, Nicolas Beatrizet made this engraving of the statue and plinth as part of a series of prints of Roman monuments, which were often purchased by travelers to Rome. Michelangelo was uncredited in such images, but his impact on civic design gradually became part of the collective visual memory of Rome.

Object facts

• Title: Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius
• Date: 1548
• Creator attribution: Nicolas Beatrizet (French, active Italy, 1507 or 1515-about 1565)
• Culture: France, worked in Rome, 16th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1922.143

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.