This catalogue accompanies an exhibition exclusively devoted to the image of Antinous, the lover of the Emperor Hadrian, who died in the Nile around AD 130.

In his grief, and before his own death only eight years later, the Emperor initiated a cult of Antinous which led to more sculptures of this ordinary youth than of any Roman subject bar Augustus and Hadrian himself.

The exhibition uses this very human story as a way into looking at some of the key issues in the study of Antique sculpture, including identification, duplication, likeness, scale and restoration, while couching it in the more romantic context of the recreation of a lover’s beauty in form and text. Includes specially commissioned installation photography by Paul Gardner and Miel Verhasselt.