The Sons and Daughters of Italy and the Cincinnati Parks Foundation are aiming for a summer dedication date for a replacement Capitoline Wolf statue in Eden Park. The original depicting the she-wolf nursing the Roman mythological twins Romulus and Remus was stolen in June 2022.
"We are grateful that there's over 100 replicas of this statue throughout the world, and so we were able to find the plaster casts in Florence, Italy," says Cincinnati Parks Foundation Executive Director Jennifer Hafner Spieser. "So, right now, it's at a foundry there, and our goal is to have the statue back sometime this summer for a hopeful celebration in the park."
The bronze statue was discovered missing on the morning of June 17, 2022, severed at the paws. The thieves haven't been caught, nor the missing statue found.
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Members of the Sons and Daughters of Italy Cincinnatus Lodge #1191 reached out to the Parks Foundation shortly after the theft to arrange a fundraising campaign to replace the statue. Spieser says they hit and exceeded the $50,000 goal within several months. The United Italian Society is also involved in the project.
Once the new statue arrives from Italy, it will be installed on the original base in the same location.
"We'll be able to clean up the area around the park within Twin Lakes and then we will be adding storybook signage to tell the story of how this original project came to be, and how this great group from the Sons and Daughters of Italy helped us replace this very quickly," says Spieser.
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The replacement committee and the Park Board are working on adding lighting and other measures to make the location more secure, Spieser adds.
Did the original statue come from Mussolini?
The story of the original project has been muddled over the years, leading to controversy, which some theorized could have been the motivation behind the theft.
The statue is an exact replica of Lupa Capitolina, also referred to as the Lupa Romana, at the Musei Capitolini in Rome. It was a gift to the city of Cincinnati from the city of Rome in 1931. Since the gift was sent during the time when dictator Benito Mussolini was in power, over time it was thought and said by some to have been a gift from Mussolini. That led to a call in 2015 by then-City Council Member Chris Seelbach to remove the statue because of the alleged ties.
Cincinnati Parks and the Sons and Daughters of Italy say that's not how the statue came to be in Cincinnati. Spieser says the Cincinnatus lodge is helping correct the record.
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"This started in 1929," Spieser recounts. "It was the Order of the Sons of Italy from their Cincinnatus lodge that were advocating to have this piece. They were celebrating a bicentennial convention in Cincinnati at that time and had learned that the city of Rome had received a replica statue of the Lupa Romana and they had advocated to have this piece. So it was truly a gift from the city of Rome to Cincinnati in celebration of Cincinnatus, who was a Roman leader."
Installation is tentatively expected in June but the potential for delays could push it out to September.
