Villa Adriana in Tivoli hosts from 30 November to 5 May 2024, at the Mouseia, the exhibition I am a force of the past: Hadrian, the portraits curated by Andrea Bruciati, an unprecedented exhibition that brings together all the known portraiture typologies of the emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD).

New appointment, after Antinous disparu: memories of a desire, dedicated to the theme of history and memory, with a double homage to two great intellectuals, Pasolini and Proust, the exhibition draws inspiration from the division into types of the over 150 known Hadrian portraits, undertaken by Max Wegner in 1956 and today there are eight. In this comparative work we make use of prestigious loans from the Capitoline Museums of Rome and the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, but we also draw on the collections of the Villa Adriana and Villa d'Este Institutes.

The exhibition partly occupies the first floor of the Mouseia, interacting with the permanent exhibition of works from Villa Adriana. Furthermore, while the Amazons from the Canopus statuary cycle are on loan at the Capitoline Museums in Rome as part of the monographic exhibition dedicated to PHIDES, the project dedicated to Hadrianic portraits is intended to re-semantise the spaces and integrate the exhibition offer for visitors. The exhibition therefore represents an opportunity not only to see together, as in an exclusive marble repertoire, the portrait typologies of the emperor, but above all to directly deal with the vitality of the past, whose legacy questions and urges the present, in terms of it belongs intimately.