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rheinsbergIn this post, I'm going to talk about the Antinous statue at Sanssouci.
First, who was Antinous?
Antinous was the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. He was considered extremely beautiful. He drowned in the Nile in his late teens or early 20s under mysterious circumstances, during a trip to Egypt. After his death, Hadrian was devastated by grief and deified his lost love.
No one knows how he died, and various ancient authors gave different explanations, such as murder, accidental drowning, or participation in a human sacrifice ritual meant to trade the remaining years of his life for Hadrian's. Under the last scenario, Hadrian would have been sick at the time and in need of rejuvenation.
The true answer doesn't matter for our purposes. What matters is that the human sacrifice story became immensely popular, and Antinous became an iconic figure to future generations for both male-male love and loyalty to one's leader.
The statue:
In 1500, a Greek statue made of bronze turned up in Rhodes. It depicted an attractive young man in the nude. Its arms were missing. Because it fit a type of "beautiful youth," it was named after a famous beautiful youth from antiquity: Ganymede.
Authentic bronze statues from the ancient Greek period are rare, because bronze is easily melted down and reused. Marble copies, usually Roman and much later, are more common. It has since been dated to about 300 BC and attributed to the school of Lysippos.
This bronze statue was accordingly prized by art collectors, and passed through several famous hands, including Charles I of England, Louis XIV's minister Foucquet, and Eugene of Savoy, before coming to Friedrich. Along the way, its missing arms were added on during the 17th century. Fixing damaged statues from antiquity, because looking good and semi-authentic for private collections was prized over authenticity, was a common practice in the Renaissance and early modern periods.
After Eugene of Savoy, a famous general whose homosexuality was an open secret discussed by contemporaries, it passed to Joseph Wenzel, Duke of Lichtenstein (who is discussed further in the Seckendorff write-up). The first record of it being named Antinous was while it was in the possession of Lichtenstein in the 1740s, in a letter from Francesco Algarotti, who was working as an art dealer for the King of Saxony at the time.
Now, Lichtenstein owned lands in Silesia, which Friedrich had invaded and conquered in the 1740s, meaning Lichtenstein lost his lands. Simultaneously, Maria Theresa was raising taxes to try to fight off the Prussian invasion.
To raise money, Lichtenstein decided to sell his statue.
Finally, on May 16, 1747, Friedrich bought it for 5000 thalers. When the deal was sealed, Lichtenstein used a seal depicting Alexander theGay Great, which he is not known to have used before or since. He thus signaled that he believed this piece was meant by Friedrich as a piece of same-sex love iconography.
Right at this time, the palace of Friedrich's heart, Sanssouci, was being completed.
He set the statue up on the palace grounds, mere meters away from his library and his future grave site (already planned at this date), in the direct line of sight from his library. He kept the name Antinous, despite knowing that something that a sculptor working in 300 BCE cannot have had the favorite of a Roman emperor from the second century CE in mind.
We do know, from the Sanssouci library, that Friedrich not only owned copies of Pausanias and Cassius Dio (in French translation) that told the story of Antinous and portrayed him and Hadrian in a positive light, but we know Friedrich had a particular interest in this story. Excerpts from these stories exist in his handwriting.
Because of the location near his library and grave, and his interest in the Antinous story, scholars have speculated if the statue might have been set up as a silent homage to Hans Hermann von Katte. Katte is widely believed to have been Friedrich's lover when they were young, and he gave his life for the Crown Prince when he was only 26. Friedrich ordered to watch his execution, offered his own life in exchange for Katte's, fainted before the final blow fell, and was deeply traumatized after, rarely speaking of him again.
Not until 1991 was Friedrich buried at Sanssouci. His nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II had him buried at the Garrison Church in Berlin, and after that, Friedrich's body was moved several times before finally returning to Sanssouci, where had died and specified in his will that he should be buried.
The Antinous statue also had an eventful life. It was first moved by Friedrich Wilhelm II to his palace, and set up in a public area near his personal apartments, along with a great deal of iconography of subjects and soldiers sacrificing their lives for their lords.
After Napoleon defeated Prussia, the statue was moved to Paris. Between the 1790s and mid 1800s, it alternated between being called Antinous and Ganymede. In the mid 19th century, it was renamed Praying Boy, in attempt to be more accurate about what the sculptor had in mind.
Today the statue itself stands in the Altes Museum in Berlin, named the Praying Boy. My sources say the description of the statue says nothing about its history as Antinous, Ganymede, or (possibly) Katte.
In the original site where Friedrich kept this statue, near his library and grave, there is now a copy of the statue, facing the library.
If you want to get a sense of the layout of the palace, library, statue, and grave, this slideshow was set up for exactly that purpose. If you set it to full screen and navigate through the pictures in order, it's designed to give you a panoramic view, as though you were walking around the grounds of Sanssouci.
Slideshow
"Fritz's potatoes" in the last slide is a reference to the fact that it's common for people to put potatoes on his grave, as tribute to the fact that he introduced potatoes to Prussia, a very efficient crop that reduced hunger.
First, who was Antinous?
Antinous was the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. He was considered extremely beautiful. He drowned in the Nile in his late teens or early 20s under mysterious circumstances, during a trip to Egypt. After his death, Hadrian was devastated by grief and deified his lost love.
No one knows how he died, and various ancient authors gave different explanations, such as murder, accidental drowning, or participation in a human sacrifice ritual meant to trade the remaining years of his life for Hadrian's. Under the last scenario, Hadrian would have been sick at the time and in need of rejuvenation.
The true answer doesn't matter for our purposes. What matters is that the human sacrifice story became immensely popular, and Antinous became an iconic figure to future generations for both male-male love and loyalty to one's leader.
The statue:
In 1500, a Greek statue made of bronze turned up in Rhodes. It depicted an attractive young man in the nude. Its arms were missing. Because it fit a type of "beautiful youth," it was named after a famous beautiful youth from antiquity: Ganymede.
Authentic bronze statues from the ancient Greek period are rare, because bronze is easily melted down and reused. Marble copies, usually Roman and much later, are more common. It has since been dated to about 300 BC and attributed to the school of Lysippos.
This bronze statue was accordingly prized by art collectors, and passed through several famous hands, including Charles I of England, Louis XIV's minister Foucquet, and Eugene of Savoy, before coming to Friedrich. Along the way, its missing arms were added on during the 17th century. Fixing damaged statues from antiquity, because looking good and semi-authentic for private collections was prized over authenticity, was a common practice in the Renaissance and early modern periods.
After Eugene of Savoy, a famous general whose homosexuality was an open secret discussed by contemporaries, it passed to Joseph Wenzel, Duke of Lichtenstein (who is discussed further in the Seckendorff write-up). The first record of it being named Antinous was while it was in the possession of Lichtenstein in the 1740s, in a letter from Francesco Algarotti, who was working as an art dealer for the King of Saxony at the time.
Now, Lichtenstein owned lands in Silesia, which Friedrich had invaded and conquered in the 1740s, meaning Lichtenstein lost his lands. Simultaneously, Maria Theresa was raising taxes to try to fight off the Prussian invasion.
To raise money, Lichtenstein decided to sell his statue.
Finally, on May 16, 1747, Friedrich bought it for 5000 thalers. When the deal was sealed, Lichtenstein used a seal depicting Alexander the
Right at this time, the palace of Friedrich's heart, Sanssouci, was being completed.
He set the statue up on the palace grounds, mere meters away from his library and his future grave site (already planned at this date), in the direct line of sight from his library. He kept the name Antinous, despite knowing that something that a sculptor working in 300 BCE cannot have had the favorite of a Roman emperor from the second century CE in mind.
We do know, from the Sanssouci library, that Friedrich not only owned copies of Pausanias and Cassius Dio (in French translation) that told the story of Antinous and portrayed him and Hadrian in a positive light, but we know Friedrich had a particular interest in this story. Excerpts from these stories exist in his handwriting.
Because of the location near his library and grave, and his interest in the Antinous story, scholars have speculated if the statue might have been set up as a silent homage to Hans Hermann von Katte. Katte is widely believed to have been Friedrich's lover when they were young, and he gave his life for the Crown Prince when he was only 26. Friedrich ordered to watch his execution, offered his own life in exchange for Katte's, fainted before the final blow fell, and was deeply traumatized after, rarely speaking of him again.
Not until 1991 was Friedrich buried at Sanssouci. His nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II had him buried at the Garrison Church in Berlin, and after that, Friedrich's body was moved several times before finally returning to Sanssouci, where had died and specified in his will that he should be buried.
The Antinous statue also had an eventful life. It was first moved by Friedrich Wilhelm II to his palace, and set up in a public area near his personal apartments, along with a great deal of iconography of subjects and soldiers sacrificing their lives for their lords.
After Napoleon defeated Prussia, the statue was moved to Paris. Between the 1790s and mid 1800s, it alternated between being called Antinous and Ganymede. In the mid 19th century, it was renamed Praying Boy, in attempt to be more accurate about what the sculptor had in mind.
Today the statue itself stands in the Altes Museum in Berlin, named the Praying Boy. My sources say the description of the statue says nothing about its history as Antinous, Ganymede, or (possibly) Katte.
In the original site where Friedrich kept this statue, near his library and grave, there is now a copy of the statue, facing the library.
If you want to get a sense of the layout of the palace, library, statue, and grave, this slideshow was set up for exactly that purpose. If you set it to full screen and navigate through the pictures in order, it's designed to give you a panoramic view, as though you were walking around the grounds of Sanssouci.
Slideshow
"Fritz's potatoes" in the last slide is a reference to the fact that it's common for people to put potatoes on his grave, as tribute to the fact that he introduced potatoes to Prussia, a very efficient crop that reduced hunger.
