The Roman youth Antinous, who was deified by the Emperor Hadrian and lent his name to the city of Antinopolis, is portrayed in Pharaohonic dress that recalls his death in the Nile. The Roman marble prototype, excavated around 1740 at Hadrian's villa, is now in the Vatican Museum, Rome. It became particularly celebrated after its removal to Paris by Napoleon Bonaparte in the 1790s and replicas obtained at this time by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1842) were displayed at his Duchess Street mansion/museum. Hope's figures, no doubt, provided the inspiration for this pair, which were executed after a model by James De Ville (d.1846), plaster figure manufacturer of the Strand. A pair of Coade Stone figures dated 1800 at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, are also thought to have come from Hope's collection (see A. Kelly, Mrs Coade's Stone, Worcs., 1990, p. 95).