Built for
Hadrian (117/138) and dedicated to his gay lover Antinous, who was born in
Bithynia in northern Turkey
It was
found in 1500 near the church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme,
where in antiquity there was the Sessorian Palace and it was moved in 1632 in
front of Palazzo
Barberini by pope Urban VIII
It was
moved again in 1773 in the Cortile della Pigna in
the Vatican, where he was never raised, and finally erected here on the Pincian
Hill in 1822 by Giuseppe Marini for Pius VII
Chiaramonti (1800/23)
The
inscriptions on the obelisk say that it was placed on the tomb of Antinous
and that the tomb of Antinous was in the garden of the emperor in Rome
Maybe then
it was in the gardens of Adonis on the Palatine Hill from which also come the
round reliefs of the Arch of Constantine
“The cult of
Antinous lasted much longer than the reign of Hadrian, his imperial lover. Free
of Hadrian he drew his mass following, and his image is found not only in works
of art for the upper classes but also in objects of daily life - lamps, plates
and bowls. Whatever was the original idea behind his deification, the ageless
Bitinious became a talisman by which the Greeks inhabitants of the empire could
simultaneously celebrate their identity and their loyalty to Rome. He embodied
the reconciliation between the two dominant cultures of the Mediterranean
world. He was the Panhellenic ideal made flesh” (Anthony Everitt)
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