Ancient Rome · AD 130
Hadrian and Antinous: the emperor who made his lover a god
Dear reader,
In October of the year 130, during a journey along the Nile, a young man from Bithynia named Antinous drowned. He was around twenty. He was also the beloved companion of the Roman emperor Hadrian, and what followed has no equal in the ancient world.
Hadrian founded a city on the riverbank where Antinous died and named it after him. He declared him a god. Temples were built, games were held in his honour, and sculptors across the empire were commissioned to carve his face. Today, Antinous is one of the most frequently portrayed people of antiquity. You can find him in museums from Rome to London to Athens: the same full lips, the same lowered gaze, the same curls, over and over again.
Think about that for a moment. The ancient world’s most famous face of beauty is the face of a man loved by another man. And it exists because of grief.
We often look at classical marble as an ideal: the perfect body, cool and untouchable. Hadrian knew better. Every one of those statues is a love letter, written by someone who could not stop writing it.
Our prints borrow that light, the hard light of marble. But under the surface, the question is always the same: who was looking at this face, and how much did they love it?
With love, from the messenger,
Boté