individual statue, and with what
exultation he records its arrival.

"The Cardinal has brought from Tivoli on a _carro_ drawn by sixteen
bullocks a female river deity of colossal size well preserved" (and
still to be seen reclining on the margin of a reservoir). To the relief
of _Antinous_ Winckelmann gave the place of honour which it now
occupies. Let us read his own record of the esteem in which he held it.

"The glory and the crown of sculpture in this age _as well as in all
ages_" he does not hesitate to assert, "are two likenesses of Antinous."
One of them, in the Albani villa, is in relief, the other is a colossal
head in the Mondragone villa.

"The former disinterred from Hadrian's villa is," says Winckelmann,
"only a fragment of an entire figure which probably stood on a chariot.
For the right hand, which is empty, is in a position that leads me to
conclude that it must have held the reins. In this work therefore would
have been represented the deification of Antinous as we know that
figures so honoured were placed upon cars to signify their translation
to the gods.

[Illustration: Villa Albani]

[Illustration: Casino, Villa Albani

_Alinari_]

[Illustration: _Alinari_

Candelabrum from Hadrian's Villa

Museum of the Vatican]

[Illustration: _Alinari_

Candelabrum from Hadrian's Villa

Museum of the Vatican]

"The colossal head in the Mondragone villa (now in the Louvre) I
hold it no heresy to say is, next to the Vatican Apollo and the Laocoon,
the most beautiful work which has come down to us."

The two friends lived a charmed life more in the past than in the Rome
of their own day until the spree was rudely broken by Winckelmann's
tragic death at the hands of a vulgar robber, and the grey-haired
cardinal wandered alone among his cherished marbles. Many of these he
donated to the Capitoline Museum and to the Vatican, but the relief of
Antinous he held among his most cherished possessions. It would have
broken the good man's heart to have known that these statues were doomed
to wander far from the home which he had provided for them. The French
took possession of Italy, and the masterpieces of the Villa Albani
formed only a fraction of the wholesale robberies which for a time
enriched the museum of the Louvre.

On the fall of Napoleon the Pope chose the sculptor Canova as his envoy
to negotiate with the allies for the return of the art treasures of
Italy. Canova was successful, for he plead