Italy is celebrating the return of a magnificent statue of Emperor Hadrian's wife, Vibia Sabina, with a major exhibition at the artwork's new home near Rome.
The marble statue itself, in outstanding condition despite being some 1,900 years old, will be the highlight of the show at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli June 16-November 4.
The statue is one of 13 looted antiquities that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts recently returned to Italy.
Standing over two metres high, it is a work of exceptional beauty.
The empress' hair is pulled back and twisted into a coil wrapped about her head into a knot at the front.
The folds of her cloak reveal the shape of her elegant, mature body, while her thoughtful expression conveys a sense of grace and nobility.
Experts say the statue was probably carved in the period of Sabina's death in 136 or 137 AD.
The exhibition is split into three parts, two of which are devoted to her.
The first section traces Sabina's family tree and tells the story of her life and her unhappy, childless marriage to the emperor.
Hadrian (76-138 AD) wed Sabina in around 100 AD, when she was aged about 14.
She was the great niece of his friend Trajan, who he succeeded as emperor in 117 AD.
Historians believe the couple did not get along because of Sabina's independent nature and Hadrian's homosexuality.
There were even rumours that Hadrian poisoned her, although these do not sit well with the fact that he declared her a goddess after her death.
Sabina's divinity is the subject of the second part of the show.
This section also reveals how Italy's art sleuths managed to show the statue had been illegally smuggled out of Italy and looks at the restoration work carried out on it in Boston.
The third part is devoted to the furnishings, art and architectural features of Hadrian's Villa, the largest and richest Imperial Roman villa ever built.
Started soon after Hadrian's investiture in 117, it took 10 years to build and the emperor himself showed his architectural skills in paying homage to the most beautiful buildings in his Empire.
Protected by a beautiful park, the villa is one of the most evocative classical sites in Italy and draws thousands of visitors a year.
One of the best-preserved parts is a recreation of the famous statue-lined pool shrine at Canopus in Egypt - an memorial to Hadrian's boy-lover Antinoos.
The architectural gems were linked by pathways and passages - including a subterranean one inspired by a classical description of the Underworld - to form a sort of small city, used by Hadrian as a summer court.
The vast site - at least the size of Pompeii - was looted by barbarians and plundered by later stone-hunters but has still disgorged hundreds of artistic treasures since the first excavations in the 16th century.
The almost 300 artworks discovered there are scattered around the museums of Europe.
