Antinous, called the Braschi Antinous
Unknown · Second quarter of the second century AD, before 138
A tall, athletic nude leans on a support draped with a lion skin, the pose of Hercules at rest, but the head belongs to Antinous, the young favourite of the emperor Hadrian who drowned in the Nile in the year 130 and was made a god. The thick curls falling over the brow, cut with a drill, and the full lips and downcast gaze are the marks of his official portrait, which was reproduced across the empire. Stand back and notice that the head and body are of different marbles: the statue is a composite, assembled in the eighteenth century, probably by the Roman restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, who set a fine Antinous head onto an unrelated Herculean torso.
Both parts date from the second quarter of the second century, and the body is said to come from Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. Almost everything you see below the knees, both arms, most of the lion skin and much of the face is modern marble, added to make a complete showpiece for a Roman palace. The name recalls the Braschi family of Pope Pius the Sixth, and the statue reached the Louvre in 1803 among the antiquities taken from Rome under Napoleon.
Did You Know? The head and the body never met in antiquity; an eighteenth-century restorer married an Antinous portrait to a Hercules torso.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.