The ancient Roman bronze Caligula bust. Source: Strawberry Hill House & Garden.   An ancient bronze bust of the notorious Roman emperor Caligula was uncovered in England after disappearing over a century ago. Just five inches tall and dating back to the destruction of Herculaneum, the bust was once owned by Horace Walpole, an English writer, politician, and art collector. The newly-discovered Caligula bust will be on view at Strawberry Hill House, Walpole’s 18th-century London home, from June 29.   From Herculaneum to Strawberry Hill House Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, London. Source: Strawberry Hill House & Garden.   In the 18th century, the Caligula bust was unearthed in Herculaneum, having been preserved under layers of volcanic ash since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. A British ambassador to Italy acquired the rare bust and gave it to his friend Horace Walpole, who lived in a new Gothic Revival villa of his own design in London. Known as Strawberry Hill House, Walpole’s residence housed an impressive collection of art and artifacts. Today, the house and its collection are open to the public as a museum.   According to a recent statement from Strawberry Hill House, Walpole was captivated by the Caligula bust: “I gaze on it from morning to night,” Walpole wrote. “It is more a portrait than any picture I ever saw…. The hair and ears seem neglected, to heighten the expression of the eyes, which are absolutely divine, and have a wild melancholy in them, that one forebodes might ripen to madness.” After Walpole died in 1797, the ancient Caligula bust passed through several owners and eventually disappeared.   “They Had No Idea It Was Caligula,” Says Curator The rediscovered Caligula bust. Source: Strawberry Hill House, London.   Since Walpole’s death, several objects have disappeared from his expansive yet unusually well-documented collection. Silva Davoli, a curator and provenance researcher, has spent years tracking down the various “lost treasures” of Strawberry Hill House, including Walpole’s Caligula bust. Davoli began with a life-size drawing of the bust, which Walpole commissioned in the 1780s. Thanks to her extensive knowledge of the Walpole collection, Davoli eventually matched the drawing to a misidentified bronze bust in the prestigious private collection of the Schroder family, which dates back generations.   It turned out that Baron John Henry Schroder acquired the Caligula bust in the late 1890s, by which time its connection to Strawberry Hill House was forgotten. The Schroder collection catalogs identified the bust as a possible Renaissance-era bronze of an unnamed youth. “They had no idea it was Caligula,” Davoli said. “I was so happy when I finally saw the bronze and made the link.” Experts determined the bust was indeed a 2,000-year-old depiction of Caligula. Who Was Emperor Caligula? A Roman Emperor: 41 AD (The Assassination of Emperor Caligula) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1871. Source: The Walters Art Museum.   Emperor Caligula is best remembered for his erratic and cruel behavior. He was assassinated just four years after being crowned emperor in 37 ADE. Despite his bad reputation—including rumors of incest and an attempt to make his horse a consul—several tiny bronze busts of Caligula were created for public use during his reign. According to Smithsonian Magazine, fewer than ten such busts of Caligula survive today. Horace Walpole’s lost-and-found Caligula bust is the focus of a new display at Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, London, which opens to the public on Saturday, June 29.

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For reasons one can guess, the Democratic Party's minions in the establishment media have finally received orders to tell the truth about President Joe Biden's cognitive decline. After Thursday night's presidential debate, they can hardly deny what everyone saw. One persistent lie, however, remains in circulation. Heavily propagandized Americans continue...

Tom Morello, Tribulation and Beast In Black are among the best new metal songs this week. Plus, vote for your favourite!

People believed the lies about how Joe Biden was competent, sharp, and well-prepared because it was what they wanted to hear. The alternative was distasteful to them. The media has lied to us for four years, even as Biden grew worse and followed the dictates of the hardcore left of his party. Unfortunately, to get […] The post We Need to Talk About a Shameless Media appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

A trial date has been set for the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students back in November 2022. The suspect, who is not being named by The Daily Wire per a policy on mass killers, will face a jury beginning on June 2, 2025, Newsweek reported. The trial date was set by Judge John Judge of Idaho’s Latah County. The trial is expected to last until August 29, 2025. The suspect, 29, has pleaded not guilty to the November 13, 2022, killings of Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21, as they slept in their off-campus home in the college town of Moscow. Part of the evidence against him, according to the prosecution, is surveillance footage showing the suspect’s white Hyundai Elantra near the scene of the crime at the time the murders took place. The defense team has argued that the suspect regularly drove around late at night looking at the stars but was not in the vicinity of the crime. “[The suspect] was out driving in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, as he often did to hike and run and/or see the moon and stars. He drove throughout the area south of Pullman, Washington, west of Moscow, Idaho,” lead defense attorney Anne Taylor wrote in a court filing in April. To back this up, the defense plans to call an expert witness “to show that [the suspect’s] mobile device was south of Pullman, Washington and west of Moscow, Idaho on November 13, 2022; that [the suspect’s] mobile device did not travel east on the Moscow-Pullman Highway in the early morning hours of November 13th,” according to the court filing. But Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson said that the alibi was too vague and that the defense shouldn’t be allowed to call any witnesses other than the defendant to prove his whereabouts, Fox News reported. “With the exception of the reference to Wawawai Park (which is new), the defendant is offering nothing new to his initial ‘alibi’ that he was simply driving around during the morning hours of November 13, 2022,” Thompson wrote in a previous filing. The suspect has been charged with four counts of murder and one count of burglary relating to the killings. Part of the evidence that led to the suspect’s arrest, mentioned in a previously unsealed probable cause affidavit, showed that police were able to narrow the timeframe of the crime to between 4:00 a.m. and 4:25 a.m. and reviewed video footage taken in the area in the time before and after the murders are believed to have occurred. Video showed a white Hyundai Elantra without a front license plate (front license plates are required in Washington and Idaho, but not in Pennsylvania, where the car was registered) in the area between 3:29 a.m. and 4:20 a.m. The vehicle can be seen passing the off-campus residence three times before returning a fourth time around 4:04 a.m. and attempting to turn around on the road. The vehicle was next seen around 4:20 a.m. traveling away from the direction of the off-campus residence at high speed, heading in the direction of a road that eventually leads to Pullman, Washington, where the suspect attended Washington State University (WSU). Video footage from the WSU campus showed a white Hyundai Elantra leaving the area and heading toward Moscow at around 2:53 a.m. At around 5:25 a.m., this vehicle was again observed on five cameras in Pullman and the WSU campus. Police pulled records for white Hyundai Elantras registered at WSU on November 29 – just over two weeks after the murders were committed – and found one belonging to the man who was eventually arrested. Police reviewed the owner’s Washington state driver’s license and determined he matched the suspect’s physical description provided by one of the surviving roommates. Police matched the suspect to the vehicle through two previous traffic stops in the months before the murders. They also learned that the suspect registered his car in Washington and received Washington plates on November 18 – five days after the murders. Police also reviewed cell phone data to show the suspect’s phone did not ping any cellular towers near the crime scene during the relevant timeframe, but an expanded examination of cell phone data showed the phone stopped reporting data to the network at around 2:47 a.m. At that time, the white Elantra was leaving Pullman and heading toward Moscow. The phone next pinged at 4:48 a.m. in an area south of Moscow, heading back to Pullman. Cell records also showed that the suspect left his home in Pullman around 9:00 a.m. on November 13 and traveled back to Moscow. Cell records dating back to June 2022 showed the suspect’s phone was in the crime scene area on at least 12 occasions before the murders – all but one in the late evening or early morning hours.