Antinous Mondragone

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Antinous Mondragone was sold in 1807 for one of the highest prices in the entire Borghese collection. Napoleon Bonaparte was the buyer. Standing 0.95 meters tall, this colossal marble head was carved between 130 and 138 AD. It depicts a young man whose death in the Nile in 130 AD made him a god across the ancient Mediterranean. The sculpture sits today in the Louvre in Paris, but its origins trace back to a ruined Roman city called Tusculum. What transformed a provincial boy from Bithynia into a deity worshipped across the ancient world? And how did one particular portrait of that boy end up in the collection of Napoleon Bonaparte?

• 2. A Boy from Bithynia

  ›

  Antinous was born in Bithynium, also called Claudiopolis, in the province of Bithynia. He was brought to Imperial Rome early in his life. Almost nothing is known about his family or his origins before that arrival. Based on the many depictions of him that survive, historians have placed his age at death at around 18 to 20 years. That puts his birth at approximately 110 to 112 AD.

  Hadrian ruled the Roman Empire from 117 AD until his death in 138 AD. It is widely accepted that Hadrian kept Antinous as his lover. The relationship is not well documented, and many of its details remain unknown. Historians understand that the relationship began when Antinous was in his mid-to-late teenage years. In Greek terms, this type of relationship was pederastic: a sexual relationship between an adult man and a teenage boy. In Roman terms, no objection was raised to a relationship between two men, so long as one was not a Roman citizen. How the two first met is a matter of speculation, with many theories but no certain answer.

  Antinous died in 130 AD in disputed circumstances. Hadrian himself reported that he drowned in the Nile, and this remains the most widely accepted version. Alongside that account runs a persistent speculation about sacrifice. Some hold that Antinous sacrificed himself willingly for Hadrian's benefit. Others suggest the sacrifice was not willing. The evidence behind either alternative is thin.

  In the year of his death, 130 AD, Antinous became the subject of a new religion.

• 3. The Living Cult

  ›

  Antinoöpolis, in Egypt, was home to the chief cult of Antinous, with two temples dedicated to his veneration. The cult that formed around his memory proved more lively and more enduring than Hadrian's own imperial cult. It centered on Alexandria and Asia Minor but spread well beyond both.

  In Mantineia, Antinous was treated as a local god, with two temples built in his honor. Athens preserved at least four sculptures devoted to Antinous, alongside many other forms of devotion. On mainland Greece, at least thirteen cities recorded their veneration of him. Across the Peloponnese, groups of worshippers were scattered through the region. Substantial cults, complete with temples and priesthoods, were established at Hermopolis, Oxyrhynchus, and Tebtynis. In Bithynia, the birthplace of Antinous, one of the largest and most vigorous cults took root.

  In what is now Italy, at least ten areas expressed some form of worship, with evidence of seven temples in his honor. Traces of his veneration reached the coast of North Africa. In Asia Minor, around twenty-seven known cities left evidence of honoring the god, among them Smyrna, Nikomedia, and Taros.

  Augustus and Hadrian are the only figures of classical antiquity whose images rivaled that of Antinous for recognition. The spread of Antinous as a god helped draw together the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian traditions into a common act of worship.

• 4. A Face in Marble

  ›

  Thirty-one holes, drilled in three different sizes around the head, once held a metal garland. The garland is thought to have been made of ivy or vine leaves. This head ornament may have been a tainia, a type of headpiece worn by Greeks during religious festivals and depicted in cult images.

  Striated eyebrows, full pouting lips, and a somber expression mark this as a portrait of Antinous. The head is twisted down and to the right, a posture reminiscent of the Lemnian Athena. Its smooth skin and elaborate, center-parted hair echo Hellenistic images of Dionysus, whose Roman equivalent was Bacchus, and also of Apollo. Side locks of hair visible on either side of the head also appear in images of Dionysus. That shared detail reinforces the visual connection between the two figures.

  Bronze, ivory, or some form of colored stone may have formed the eyes; they are now lost.

  The Mondragone head formed part of a colossal acrolithic cult statue. Acrolithic construction combines wood and stone. The marble was reserved for the visible portions of the figure, the areas depicting flesh. The clothed portions were built in wood. This technique was used more frequently in places where fine marble was expensive or scarce. The hairstyle of this head is key to its classification among surviving Antinous portraits, a question art historians have addressed with considerable care.

• 5. Three Faces of Antinous

  ›

  Art historian Caroline Vout has argued that classifying Antinous sculptures is not a straightforward exercise. Most pieces fall into one of three recognized types: the Main type, the Egyptianizing type, and the Mondragone type. The Main type includes two variants, A and B, which differ in the arrangement of locks across the forehead. Vout holds that the lock-scheme method is a significant contributing factor in classification but should not on its own disqualify a piece.

  Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli contained an example of the Egyptianizing type. This type takes its visual cues from Egyptian iconography and is visually distinct from the other two.

  Dionysus serves as a common reference point across all three types. Vout has argued that the cult image of Antinous depended on borrowed iconography from youthful gods. Without those borrowings, she contends, the image would amount to another attractive young face in Imperial Rome.

  Pausanias, the ancient geographer and writer, is the only ancient author known to have offered iconographic guidance on Antinous imagery. He noted similarities between the Antinous at Mantineia and depictions of Dionysus. The Mondragone type takes its defining characteristic from that same Dionysiac hairstyle. It is the type to which the Antinous Mondragone belongs.

• 6. From Tusculum to Paris

  ›

  In 1618 and 1619, the gallery of Palazzo Mondragone began fitting its displayed antiquities with pedestals. The busts were arranged in pairs of male and female figures, and their identities were often disputed. The male figure long assumed to represent Julius Caesar was replaced by the Mondragone head after its recovery from the earth.

  Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, a Swedish architect, recorded seeing the head in the gallery during a visit in 1687. This creates a conflict with the standard account of the head's discovery. The accepted dating places the recovery near Tusculum, at Frascati, between 1713 and 1729. Tessin's record predates that range by decades, and the two accounts have not been fully reconciled.

  In 1807, the Antinous Mondragone was sold as part of a large transaction involving the Borghese collections, completed for Napoleon Bonaparte. Among all the pieces in that sale, the head commanded one of the highest prices. After the purchase, a brown layer of wax was applied to give the surface an opaque finish. Plaster was also added around the base of the neck to make the statue appear more complete. Both additions were removed in a later cleaning.

  The Antinous Mondragone has been part of the Louvre's collection since the Napoleonic purchase of 1807. In 2006, it traveled to the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds for the exhibition "Antinous: The Face of the Antique." In 2008, it made a second journey to the United Kingdom for the British Museum's "Hadrian: Empire and Conflict." An 18th-century art historian had already written about this head and secured its place in European scholarship.

• 7. Winckelmann's Praise

  ›

  Johann Winckelmann, an 18th-century art historian, called the Antinous Mondragone "the glory and crown of art in this age as well as in others." He described it further as "so immaculate that it appears to have come fresh out of the hands of the artist." Winckelmann published both judgments in his History of Ancient Art, the work that made the sculpture better known to a wider European audience.

  Winckelmann's admiration had a specific foundation. He favored the sculptural style of 5th-century BC Greece above all other periods. The Antinous Mondragone, though Roman in date, echoed the aesthetic of that earlier tradition. Winckelmann saw in the Mondragone head a work that belonged to the 5th century BC in everything but its date.