The nude statue on the left of this page is of Antinous, the Emperor Hadrian's favorite. Roman sculptors created many striking portraits of individuals, but Antinous was so beautiful that his statues depict a new ideal of male beauty. In The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, Kenneth Clark wrote that "It was the wish of the Emperor Hadrian that the beautiful features of his favorite should appear on the statues of the gods; and so we find this dark Arabian head on the bodies of Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysos, the traditional proportions being modified to suit his heavier torso. For almost the first time since the fourth century a type of beauty is taken from a real head and not from a copybook."
There is quite a bit of truth in Kenneth Clark's words. After Praxiteles the canons for ideal male beauty were established and statues of Apollo became increasingly stereotyped. Hellenistic sculptors created many beautiful fauns, but these fauns have a wild, rather than an ideal beauty. Female nudes were still a new subject matter for Hellenistic sculptors, so there was more creativity in the exploration of ideal female bodies, but the heads were often as stereotyped as those of male statues.
In my previous article I said that the gardens at the Chateau of Versailles could be called the ultimate expression of the European formal garden. The villa which the Emperor Hadrian created between 118 and 138 CE has sometimes been called the Versailles of the ancient world, so it may be interesting to compare a map of Hadrian's Villa with a map of the Chateau of Versailles. The most striking difference between the two layouts is that Versailles is dominated by geometry; everything radiates from the center of the chateau, where the king's bedroom was located. Hadrian's Villa is made up of individual components, such as the Canopus, Maritime Theater, Poecile, and the Piazza d'Oro. These individual components are geometrical, but the entire villa does not have a geometrical plan. The various components are mainly unified with each other by the lavish use of water. With 12 multiple fountains, 30 single fountains, and 12 pools, the entire villa could be called a water garden.
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