A grinning centaur, a mythological creature that is half-man and
half-horse, stands proudly in this sculpture. He carries a set
of panpipes and an animal skin is draped over his left arm.
Colored marble such as this was quite expensive and a popular
symbol of wealth in the Roman world. It was used primarily for
architectural decoration and occasionally for sculpture. This
sculpture, acquired by the Getty Museum as a Roman work and
believed to have come from the ruins of the palace of the
emperor Domitian, has been recently reexamined. These studies
suggest that the sculpture was in fact made in the 1700s as a
copy of a Roman statue. The centaur is covered with pointing
marks that are not ancient. The Getty Museum centaur is
remarkably similar to another centaur carved by the eighteenth-
century sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, who offered copies of
Roman centaurs in his sales catalogue. The Getty centaur may
also be the work of Cavaceppi.