Grand Tour Antinous Capitol Bronze Antique Italy Souvenir 19th Century Marble

Antinous of the Capitol Bronze with brown patina Rome, mid-19th century H (total) 16 cm This bronze subject representing the Antinous of the Capitol, was executed after the ancient marble preserved in the Capitoline Museum in Rome (inv. no. MC741). Discovered at the beginning of the 18th century, possibly at the Villa Hadriana in Tivoli, and first mentioned in 1733 in the inventory of the collection of Cardinal Albani, at the time of its purchase by Pope Clement XII, this marble was restored by Pietro Bracci (restitution of the left arm and leg) and then exhibited in the brand new Capitoline Museum, opened to the public in 1734, then ceded to France at the end of the 18th century by the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797. It made a triumphant entry with other antiques and works of art in Paris in July 1798 and was exhibited for 15 years at the Muséum central des Arts (Louvre) from its inauguration on 9 November 1800, then returned to Rome in 1815 at the fall of the Empire and reinstalled in the Capitoline Museum in 1816, where it is still on display. This figure of Antinous was so successful from its discovery that it dethroned, in the hearts of certain art lovers and historians, another famous figure of Antinous: the Antinous of the Belvedere, a marble discovered in 1543 and admired since then in papal collections. Regarding the Antinous of the Capitol, Mariette, in 1750, wrote in her treatise on engraved stones "since about thirty years since its discovery it would have almost made us forget the Statue of the same Antinous at the Belvedere * if the latter had not had the privilege of having appeared first, and of having always been rightly regarded as the ruler of the proportions of a handsome young man". The immediate success of the Antinous of the Capitol resulted in numerous copies. A first marble copy was made in Rome for Louis XV, begun by Marchand in 1741 and completed by Jacques Sally in 1747; then offered in 1753 by the king to the financier Etienne Michel Bouret, while another marble by the Italian sculptor Francesco Carradori was placed in the Palatine Gallery of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence in 1785. Bronze casts were also made by Luigi Valadier in the 1780s, one delivered for the French collector for Pierre Grimod d'Orsay in 1785 (Louvre Museum), another preserved in the collections of the Villa Borghese in Rome. Finally, a bronze copy was also made for the Tsar of Russia by the founder Vasily Petrovich Ekimov in 1800 for the gardens of Peterhof Castle. Many bronze reductions, like our Antinous, were also made, at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, by Roman bronze makers for the travelers of the Grand Tour. Free delivery for France