The sculpture was one of the very few Roman bronzes that was never lost to sight.[clarification needed] The work was standing outside the Lateran Palace when the Navarrese rabbi Benjamin of Tudela saw it in the 1160s and identified it as Absalom, who "was without blemish from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head." It was noted around 1200 by the English visitor, Magister Gregorius, who noted in his De mirabilibus urbis Romae that it was ridiculously thought to be Priapus. It must have been one of the sculptures transferred to the Palazzo dei Conservatori by Pope Sixtus IV in the 1470s, though it is not recorded there until 1499–1500.
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