Cast

Subject: Antinoo Grimani

Cultural context: made by a local workshop in Veneto, Italy

Date: 16th century A.D. (?)

Description

This is a plaster cast of a marble bust which comes from Grimani’s collection and now belong to the National Archaeological Museum of Venice. It represents Antinous, the favourite of the Roman emperor Hadrian. G.Bodon studied the iconography of some famous portraits from Grimani’s collection and observed how they were reproduced during the Renaissance period. Particularly, our Antinous’s cast seems to have been the same one used to produce a bronze bust which is now held in Munich. Using plaster casts as models was a very common process in workshop and a lot of Mantova Benavide’s cast also had this important function before entering the collections.

Materials and techniques: plaster/ piece mould

Dimensions: heigth 53 cm

Provenance: Mantova Benavides Collection, Padua; Vallisneri Collection, Padua

University of Padua, Museum of Archaeological Sciences and Art

Cat. Number: MB64

Bibliography

• Candida Bianca, I calchi rinascimentali della collezione Mantova Benavides, Padova, Cedam, 1967, pp. 43-46, n. 5, figg. 9-10.
• Schwarzenberg Erwin, Bianca Candida: i calchi rinascimentali della collezione Mantova Benavides (recensione), in Gnomon, XLII (1970), p. 611, n. 6.
• Franzoni Lanfranco, Antiquari e collezionisti nel Cinquecento, in Storia della Cultura Veneta.III. Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, a cura di Girolamo Arnaldi, Manlio Pastore Stocchi, III, Vicenza, Neri Pozza, 1981, p.233.
• Bodon Giulio, 68.Antinoo Grimani, in Un Museo di Antichità nella Padova del Cinquecento. La raccolta di Marco Mantova Benavides all'Università di Padova, a cura di Irene Favaretto, Alessandra Menegazzi, Roma, Giorgio Bretschneider, 2013, pp. 95-96