Height 38″ and Width 29″ Depth 15″ Base 11 x 11 Inches
Roman Style Sculpture. Imposing Large Cast Study Of Antinous in the Style Of
Bust Found in Hadrian’s Villa in Vatican Museum. As well as The Bust in Via dei
Fori Imperiali Rome. A Very Large Bust Standing at 3 Feet 2 Inches and Width of
2 Feet 5 Inches. A breathtaking Dark Patina over the Cast Study, that gives it
an imposing old look as seen in the pictures. An outstanding piece to have in a living room
a library , an office, an entryway , on top of a console , in an open bookcase.
A great gift idea for a house warming, it will elevate your interior Design. It
can go in a modern setting, or traditional design.
The most striking thing about the young man was his physical
appearance. He was known for his great beauty, which was depicted numerous
times by artists, often long after his death. The sculptures portray a young
man with thick, curly hair and a full mouth. From his radiant countenance to
his sculpted physique, Antinous personified the epitome of physical
attractiveness and became an eternal symbol of timeless beauty. Based on the
existing busts and other artistic portrayals, Antinous physical appearance was
sometimes taken as a clue that the young man was not solely of Greek ancestry.
Hadrian seems to have favored men as sexual and romantic
partners, and Antinous was his most famous favorite. Historians today agree
that there was a sexual component to their relationship, a fact that was
well-known in Roman times. Antinous was not the first male companion that
Hadrian took in his life, and this sort of relationship was socially acceptable
then.
Some of the busts that exist and were the reason studies
such as our piece was made after, here are the Four : 1- Part of a statue of
Antinous depicted as Apollo, 130-138 AD, from the Via dei Fori Imperiali Rome
Centrale Montemartini, Rome. 2- Bust of
Antinous, 130-138 AD, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Carole Raddato CC
BY-SA. 3- Bust of Antinous, found at
Hadrian’s Villa in 1790, Vatican Museums. 4- Portrait bust with head of
Antinous. Found in Patras in 1856 along with bust no. 418. Dated a little after
130 AD. Inv. no. 417.
Antinous, son of Eupeithes , Greek: c. 111 – c. 130 was a young Greek man from Bithynia and a
favorite and likely lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Following his death
aged eighteen, Antinous was deified (made into a deity a God of the beauty ) on
Hadrian’s order s, being worshipped in both the Greek East and Latin West,
sometimes as a god and sometimes as a hero.
Little is known of Antinous’s life, although it is known
that he was born in Claudio polis (present day Bolu, Turkey), in the Roman
province of Bithynia. He was probably introduced to Hadrian in 123, before
being taken to Italy for a higher education.
He had become the favorite of Hadrian by 128, when he was
taken on a tour of the Roman Empire as part a group of people accompanying
Hadrian. Antinous accompanied Hadrian when he attended the yearly Eleusinian
Mysteries religious rites in Athens, and was with him when he killed the
Marousian lion in Libya, an event highly publicized by the Emperor. In October
130, as they were part of a flotilla (group of small warships) going along the
Nile, Antinous died amid mysterious circumstances. A number of suggestions have
been put forward for how he died, ranging from an accidental drowning to an
intentional human sacrifice or suicide.
After his death, Hadrian deified Antinous and founded an
organized cult devoted to his worship that spread throughout the Roman Empire.
Hadrian founded the city of Antinoöpolis close to Antinous’s place of death,
which became a cultic center for the worship of Osiris-Antinous. Hadrian also
founded games in commemoration of Antinous to take place in both Antinoöpolis
and Athens, with Antinous becoming a symbol of Hadrian’s dreams of
pan-Hellenism. The worship of Antinous proved to be one of the most enduring
and popular of cults of deified humans in the Roman Empire, and events
continued to be founded in his honor long after Hadrian’s death. Antinous
became a symbol of male homosexuality in Western culture, appearing in the work
of Oscar Wilde and Fernando Pessoa.
