Cast in bronze around 175 AD and miraculously spared the medieval melting-pot because it was mistaken for a likeness of Constantine, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius rears magnificently on its pedestal in this crisp early-twentieth-century photographic postcard — one of ancient Rome's most storied survivors and the model for virtually every equestrian monument of the Renaissance. The emperor's outstretched right hand, gesturing in clementia toward a defeated enemy believed to crouch beneath the horse's raised foreleg (now lost), reads with unmistakable authority even in monochrome. At the time this card was printed the statue still stood on its original Capitoline Hill placement designed by Michelangelo; it was not moved indoors to the Capitoline Museums for conservation until 1981. The undivided back, printed "Cartolina Postale Italiana / Carte Postale," is unused, placing this card firmly in the pre-1907 era of Italian postal history.