Bust of Antinous

Italy, Roman, 2nd century AD
Rome, Janiculan Hill
Parian Marble
H60 cm (total), H34 cm (chin to crown)
Townley Collection
GR 1805.7-3.97 (BM Cat Sculpture 1899)

This fine marble bust depicts Antinous (c. AD 110-130), companion of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. A youth from Bithynia, an area in the northwest of modern Turkey, he had first come to the attention of the Emperor during Hadrian's travels in the East. His grace and beauty soon made him the Emperor's favourite. While accompanying him on a journey up the Nile, Antinous was tragically drowned. A romantic legend soon sprang up, suggesting he had given his life for Hadrian. The Emperor, devastated by this loss, in turn declared Antinous a god and his cult spread, particularly through the eastern empire.

Court-artists created an official image of Antinous, based mostly on Classical Greek statues of gods combined with individual, though highly idealised portrait features. This bust shows his head slightly inclined and turned to the left, his smooth face sensuous and with full lips. His coiffure is made up of a lively mass of long locks of hair, around which he wears a wreath of ivy, an attribute of the god Dionysos. The head in fact once belonged to a statue showing Antinous in the guise of this deity, and was only set into a bust in the eighteenth century.