✅ In the Accademia (privately owned), two of the most beautiful and famous sculptures of Villa Adriana were found: the Old Centaur and the young Centaur, now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. They decorated the back room of the Belvedere, and were placed on a podium as a scenographic decoration.

✅ They were discovered in December 1736 by Monsignor Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti from Bergamo. He had bought the excavation permit from the owner Simplicio Bulgarini for only 500 scudi, who was convinced that there was nothing to find. Furietti discovered the Centaurs after few days of excavations.

✅ Monsignor Furietti had the Centaurs restored and exhibited them together with the Mosaic of the Doves in the audience hall of his Roman residence, in the Montecitorio palace, where they attracted many Italian and foreign visitors who loved the arts. Pope Benedict XIV tried in vain to buy them; pope Clement XIII succeeded because he refused the Furietti heirs the permission to export the statues to Bergamo.

✅ The two sculptures are in bigio morato marble, which imitates bronze and exceptionally have the signatures of the sculptors, Aristeas and Papias of Aphrodisias (Turkey). Beards and hair and even the fur of the animal part of their figures are chiseled into the marble with extraordinary realism. A true masterpiece that only the emperor could afford to buy and import from Asia Minor.

✅ Originally the Centaurs were ridden by a Cupid which symbolizes the power of Love. The Old Centaur has a suffering expression, because of the pains of Love and his hands are tied behind his back. The young Centaur, on the other hand, is triumphant over Love, because he is full of vitality. There are other replicas of these sculptures in the Louvre Museum, in the Vatican Museums and in the Doria Pamphilij Gallery in Rome.

✅ The two Centaurs were part of the Dionysian procession, and in fact in the Accademia a Faun and a child Dionysus were also found, both in ancient red marble. They confirm that the Accademia probably was a sacred area linked to the cult of Dionysus and Osiris, as we discovered thanks to our studies of Archaeoastronomy published in our book «Villa Adriana. Architettura Celeste. I Segreti dei Solstizi», which can be acquired in this website.

‼️ Two masterpieces of Ancient Sculpture