El Dioniso Hope-Hermitage de la villa imperial de Frascati (Italia)un relato de suplantación

Abstract

This article deals with a very peculiar case of confusion between two practically identical Roman statues of Dionysus, belonging to Hope-Hermitage type, found in different places, but both restored at the same time by the famous eighteenth-century sculptor Vincenzo Pacetti in his workshop in Rome. For this reason and by historiographic inertia, the two sculptures remained forgotten during a very long time. The one belonged to the collector Henry Philip Hope is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum in New York and its origin is uncertain. The other one comes from an ancient Roman villa in Frascati (Italy), belonged to the Tusculana area, and is currently in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Both statues perpetuate a Greek sculptural model of fourth century B.C., probably inspired in another one of fifth century B.C.