Antonio Cesarini (30 September 1889 – 24 October 1943), better known by the diminutive name Nino, was a model for several artists, such as the photographer Wilhelm von Plüschow, painters Paul Hoecker and Umberto Brunelleschi and sculptor Francesco Jerace during his youth.

In his adulthood he modelled for Vincenzo Gemito, who presented him as a prototype of homoerotic masculine beauty[citation needed].

According to Peyreffite, Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, who had been forced to leave Paris after a homosexual scandal, met him in Rome on 9 July 1904, when Cesarini was a fourteen-year-old construction worker and newspaper-seller.

Finally, d'Adelswärd-Fersen commissioned the famous sculptor Francesco Jerace to cast a statue of Cesarini in bronze, and placed it in the garden of the villa towards the sea.

[2] The Italian poet and writer Ada Negri, who had visited the Villa Lysis, published an article in 1923 in the newspaper L'Ambrosiano, shortly after the death of the Baron, describing Cesarini as follows: "The Villa was a place where everything was very beautiful, including Nino, the secretary, with the intense gaze of deep black eyes, crowned by well-shaped eyebrows."

He cites Plüschow's famous photograph as evidence, which shows a naked young man lying on a sofa inside Villa Lysis.

By contrast, Ogrinc asserts that this view of Peyrefitte's, apart from not being documented, does not seem realistic, given the preference shown by d'Adelswärd-Fersen for younger boys.

[4] Trying to protect the inheritance, the Baron's family spread the rumour that he had been poisoned by Cesarini, driven by jealousy at the last relationship that d'Adelswärd-Fersen maintained with the actor Corrado Annicelli.

However, other sources[5] claim that after the sale of his rights to the Villa, together with the inheritance he received, Cesarini was rich enough to retire, as well as cultured and refined (he apparently spoke several languages), which makes it difficult to understand why he decided to sell newspapers in a kiosk.