Colossus of Barletta

The Colossus of Barletta is a large bronze statue of a Roman Emperor, nearly three times life size in Barletta, Italy.

The statue supposedly washed up on a shore, after a Venetian ship sank returning from the Sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, but it is not impossible that the statue was sent to the West much earlier. The identity of the Emperor is uncertain. According to tradition, it depicts Heraclius ; though this is most unlikely on historical and art-historical grounds. More likely subjects are Theodosius II , who may have had it erected in Ravenna in 439, Honorius , Valentinian I , Marcian , Justinian I and especially Leo I , in which case it probably topped his Column of Leo, from which fragments remain in Istanbul.

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