'A crime against art' is remedied in Cincinnati

A beloved piece of public art. A middle-of-the-night theft. Bereft local supporters.

And now, grateful public officials.

What was lost is now found, as Cincinnati Parks officials on Friday welcomed the she-wolf back to her Eden Park home.

"It was a crime against parks, it was a crime against art, it was a crime against the city of Cincinnati," Cincinnati City Council member Jeff Cramerding said just before parks officials unveiled the new Capitoline Wolf statue.

The crime was never solved, but the wolf is now back "to where it rightfully belongs," said Parks Director Jason Barron.

Gifted in 1931, replaced in 1932, stolen in 2022

On Sept. 20, 1931, local Sons of Italy members, meeting for a convention, accepted a replica of Rome’s famed Capitoline Wolf during a ceremony at Eden Park. They repeated the event the following year, on June 12, swapping a wrongly delivered version for a larger one.

The mama wolf, with the even more famous twin infants Romulus and Remus nursing under her belly, remained on quiet watch over the Ohio River for the next 90 years.

She drew sporadic attention over the decades, mostly for her loose ties to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. For the record, the governor of Rome gifted Cincinnati with the statue, according to the local chapter of the Sons and Daughters of Italy. Mussolini's legacy is now barely visible on the statue's base, which includes Anno X, indicating the 10th year of his reign.

In her 90th birthday month, the she-wolf became a sensation. On the night of June 16, 2022, the bronze statue was stolen − snipped off at the ankles, her granite and marble base left with just the twins, mouths agape, and four paws.

The theft of Cincinnati’s Capitoline Wolf may not equal art heists of the past – “Mona Lisa” snatched in 1911, European collections gutted during World War II, “The Scream” ripped off its wall in 2004 – but it drew widespread attention.

City officials called the theft “tragic” and “beyond disappointing,” saying they’d been “overwhelmed with calls and messages from frustrated citizens” who wanted the she-wolf replaced.

That quickly happened with the help of Cincinnatians of Italian descent, 100-plus of them on hand Friday to learn more about the history of famous wolf.

Twins live on in Roman myth

The thief or thieves may have wanted the wolf, at 37 inches high and 52 inches long, for scrap metal, parks officials said originally. That speculation was never confirmed and the wolf was never found, they now say.

Whoever took the wolf left behind the more famous characters in the Capitoline Wolf story – one with "all the important elements of a Disney movie," in the words of Joe Mastruserio, president of what is now Local 1101 Sons and Daughters of Italy.

According to Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus were left to die on the banks of the River Tiber, banished by a jealous king.

An unnamed she-wolf helped save the twins, nursing them in her cave. Then adopted by a shepherd, they later learned the jealous king was a great-uncle who’d stolen the throne from their grandfather.

Once informed, they helped restore their grandfather to power and set out to build a city of their own. Along the way, Romulus either killed or plotted the death of his brother – and went on to create Rome by himself.

The origin story has many versions but nonetheless inspired the original Capitoline Wolf statue and more than 80 replicas in the centuries since then.

The first she-wolf has been housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome since 1471.

Eleven are installed in the United States. Besides Cincinnati, they are located in Chicago; Boston; Cleveland; Washington, D.C.; New York City; Del Rio, Texas; Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan; Tulsa, Oklahoma; plus Rome, New York, and Rome, Georgia.

New she-wolf includes old paws

When local Italians learned their beloved she-wolf had gone missing, they wanted another one.

In cooperation with Cincinnati Parks, Cincinnati Parks Foundation and a local sculptor, they soon discovered an identical plaster version of Cincinnati’s she-wolf in a museum in Florence, Italy. That was used to design the replacement.

Just two months after the theft, Lodge 1101 trustee Mike Camacci delivered a paw from the stolen she-wolf to Italy. Artists there used the paw to replicate the scale and bronze tone of the replacement.

Parks officials sent the base, with its remaining paws, to Florence “to reunite the twins with the she-wolf who raised them,” a new sign at the site explains.

The bronze of the new she-wolf includes the melted-down paws of the original.

Sons and Daughters of Italy helped raise the $55,000 needed for the project. Known for their annual ravioli dinner, part of their contribution came from ravioli sales.

Wolf protected and promoted

The Parks Department made the she-wolf’s home more visible by clearing out some brush near its Twin Lakes home, according to parks spokesman Rocky Merz. “Other measures have been taken to secure the statue. However, we are not talking about them publicly for obvious reasons,” Merz added.

The University of Cincinnati, meanwhile, is celebrating the Capitoline Wolf's return with an exhibit that includes video from its creation in Florence.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Eden Park she-wolf statue is back