Portrait Head of Antinous (about 130-138): Artwork and History

Portrait Head of Antinous (about 130-138) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Roman.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This portrait depicts Antinous (about 111–130), the young lover of Emperor Hadrian (reigned 117–38). His characteristic facial features include an oval face, smooth complexion, almond-shaped eyes, and full lips, as well as his distinctive hairstyle of thick, wavy locks radiating from the crown of his head. This sculpture is a fragment from a larger whole, and for many years it was unclear what form the original, intact work had taken. Recent scholarship indicates that it once belonged to an over-life-size bust of Antinous currently in the Palazzo Altemps in Rome.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait Head of Antinous
• Date: about 130-138
• Artist attribution: Roman
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Marble
• Dimensions: 31.7 × 31 × 17 cm (12 1/2 × 12 × 6 1/2 in.)
• Type: Sculpture
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1924.979

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Charles L. Hutchinson

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.