Italian, Rome, late 18th century, after the Antique | Italie, Rome, fin du XVIIIe siècle, d'après l'Antique

Private European collection

This fine bronze is modelled after the monumental ancient marble of The Belvedere Antinous, which was housed in the Belvedere garden by 1545 shortly after it was unearthed and now in the Vatican Museum. The antique marble was first mentioned in 1543 when Pope Paul III purchased it for the Belvedere garden and is today displayed in the Museo Pio-Clementino (inv. no. 907).

The statue’s fame quickly spread outside of Rome and monarchs throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commissioned their own copies: a mould was made from it for Francois I by Primaticcio in 1545, a bronze cast for Charles I of England by Hubert Le Sueur in 1633, a bronze copy by the Keller Brothers in 1685 and a marble copy presumably by Lacroix in 1682 for Louis XIV and a bronze bust for Philip IV of Spain. The statue was called Antinous, which was a common moniker for all male youths; however, there were alternate, while generally disregarded, theories that it represented Milo or the Genius of a Prince. According to modern scholarly consensus, the statue is now assumed to depict Hermes.

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique (London, 1981) no.4