This marble bust of a nude young man is similar to the life-size antiquity known as the Capitoline Antinous, the celebrated statue found in Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, northeast of Rome. This famous sculpture, and the Fine Arts Museums’ example, are both Roman copies of a lost Greek marble or bronze statue of Hermes dating to the early fourth century BC. They are part of the Roman Imperial style and were sculpted during a revival of Greek culture initiated by Hadrian’s philhellenism. 

The fame of the Capitoline Antinous, and the many copies of it made in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reveals the interest in classical antiquity and the continued significance of ancient statuary. Admired for its idealizing representation of a youthful figure, the statue was considered one of the most beautiful Roman copies of a Greek statue in existence. In the late eighteenth century, because of its somber, downcast gaze and where it was discovered, the statue was thought to represent Hadrian’s lover, Antinous, but it is no longer considered to be him. 

The Museums’ highly polished example is not a copy created for the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Grand Tour. It is an ancient Roman statue that, perhaps because of damage, was cut and reworked to create an elegant bust, probably to suit eighteenth-century taste.