I ‘CIOCI’ DI TIVOLI CREAZIONE MODERNA DI UN IMMAGINARIO ADRIANEO

Abstract

At Tivoli (RM), they still preserve the memory of two red-granite statues, of considerable height,
locally called “Cioci”, once staying in the centre of the town, then given to the pope, who had
them transported to Rome at the end of XVIIIth century - and placed in the Vatican Museums. J.J.
Winckelmann interpreted them as portraits of Antinous and said that they came from the imperial
residence in Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa. Even if at those times some scholars had questioned about both
these hypothesis, the authoritative scholar’s beliefs became axioms for the scientific community to
this day. For over two a centuries modern scholars didn’t develop any attempt in re-studying the
historical and antiquarian sources before Winckelmann. To fill this gap, some results of a research
concerning the two celebrated ‘tiburtine’ sculptures are presented here, with a corpus of information,
sometimes unpublished; for example, the analysis of the sources suggests that the two statues
could be completely extraneous to Hadrian’s Villa.

Keywords: Tivoli; Hadrian’s Villa; red-granite statues; Winckelmann; antiquarian tradition; archive
research.