Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight

Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1765 (private collection)

Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight is a painting of 1765 by Joseph Wright of Derby, now in a private collection in the United Kingdom. It shows three art-lovers examining the Borghese Gladiator, a famous Hellenistic statue discovered in Italy. They must rather be examining a reproduction, since the real statue is 1.99 metres high and stands on a different base. The painting, among the early works of Joseph Wright's maturity, was widely admired. Four years later a mezzotint print of it was made by William Pether.

In Wright's time the Borghese Gladiator was in the Borghese Collection in the Villa Borghese Pinciana in Rome. In 1807 it was among the ancient sculptures sold by Camillo Borghese, 6th Prince of Sulmona to his brother-in-law Napoleon, who deposited it in the Louvre Museum in Paris, where it still is. The statue is now thought to represent a soldier, not a gladiator.

The so-called "Borghese Gladiator", the work of Agasias of Ephesus (Louvre Museum)
"Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight": mezzotint print by William Pether, 1769 (Art Institute of Chicago)

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