Coins Mirroring Sculptures: New Evidence for the Understanding of the Images of Antinous (20 min)
Presenters
Alessia Di Santi, Scuola Normale Superiore
Abstract
If the numerous sculptures
depicting Antinous are fairly well known, the numismatic sources, equally
copious, have played a quite marginal role in the studies dedicated to the
representations of this deceased young man who was heroized and deified by the
emperor Hadrian. However, numismatic sources are crucial for understanding how
the portrait of this young hero and god was invented and disseminated
throughout the Roman Empire. Antinous is in fact represented both on the
obverse and the reverse of numerous provincial Roman coins issued in his honor
and, as this paper aims to show, these designs have a very close relationship
with the better-known sculptures depicting the same subject.
This strong connection is
evident looking at the portraits on the obverses, to which the first part of
the contribution is dedicated. Here an iconographic analysis of some specimens
is offered, in order to shed new light not only on the creation and dissemination
of the well-known Antinous’s portraits types, but also on the possible
existence of further overlooked portraits. Moreover, the correlation between
sculptures and coins is clear in a number of obverses representing
three-dimensional busts, confirming that the sculptures must have been not only
the models but also the objects of these representations.
The reproduction of existing
Antinous’s sculptures on coins’ reverses is the topic of the second section.
Starting from the famous case of a statue from Delphi, which is depicted on the
reverse of a coin issued by the same city, this part examines other possible
cases of reverses bearing statues of the young man, otherwise unknown.
At the end, with the purpose
of distinguishing the dedication of specific issues from that of statues
represented therein, special attention is also paid to coin inscriptions.
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