The Roman Emperor Hadrian became acquainted with the beautiful youth named Antinous in Anatolia. The young man’s beauty inspired innumerable pieces of sculpture, but ultimately his fame became too much to bear, it seems, and he threw himself into the Nile. Hadrian continued ordering his image to be created anywhere and everywhere throughout the Empire, however. This bronze reproduction of a Roman marble relief was cast by Barbedienne in the late nineteenth century. It’s inscribed “Barbedienne.”

Measures: 35 x 235 x 255 mm.