Capitoline Antinous

The Capitoline 'Antinous' is a marble statue of a young nude male found at Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli,[1] during the time when Conte Giuseppe Fede was undertaking the earliest concerted excavations there.

[4] The statue was bought by Pope Clement XII in 1733 and went on to form the nucleus of the Capitoline Museums, Rome, where it remains.

In part due to its hair being unlike that in better-attested Antinous-types, which closely follow a very few iconographic models, it is now considered[6] to be a Roman Imperial era copy of an early 4th century BC Greek statue of Hermes.

Such a change of identification was already underway before 1900, when Augustus Hare observed in his Walks in Rome that: [the statue's] identity has only once, I think, been seriously challenged; and yet it may be reckoned more than doubtful.

Careful comparison of the torso and the arms will even raise the question whether this fine statue is not a Hermes or a hero of an earlier age [than Antinous].