The Borghese Gladiator

The Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic life-size marble sculpture actually portraying a warrior contending with a mounted combatant. It was found before 1611, at Nettuno south of Rome, among the ruins of a seaside palace of Nero and was added to the Borghese collection in Rome. Camillo Borghese was pressured to sell it to his brother-in-law, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1807; it was taken to Paris when the Borghese collection was acquired for the Louvre, where it now resides.

The sculpture was among the most admired and copied works of antiquity in the eighteenth century, providing sculptors a canon of proportions. A bronze cast was made for Charles I of England (now at Windsor), other copies can be found at Petworth House and in the Green Court at Knole.