Roman Copy of a fourth century BCE type.
This statue of Dionysos was found in Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli outside Rome in 1881. The style and character is elegant and introverted, in contrast to other more exuberant representations of the god. Earlier sculptures of Dionysos often showed an older, bearded man; here we have a beautiful long haired youth.
This is largely a result of the patronage of the Emperor Hadrian, an art lover and Grecophile, for whom this copy was made in the early first century CE. The influence of the Greek sculptor Praxiteles in the soft flesh and langourous pose is strong.
Rome, Museo Nationale (Terme) no.534
Gift of the Italian Government in 1884
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 261 (n.18)
Sieveking: Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmäler Griechischer und Römischer Skulptur, 738-9, text vol.5 (1932)
Grose: 65, no.552
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 76, no.360
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 890
Found at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli in 1881
