“The Elusive Saint Hippolytus and His Statue in the Vatican."
In 1551, excavators in the outskirts of Rome found an ancient throne inscribed in Greek. The inscription included calendars calculating the dates of Easter and the titles of some works ascribed to Saint Hippolytus, a theologian prominent in the early Roman church. Very quickly scholars identified the throne as the base of a seated statue of the saint: it was brought to the Vatican, restored, and displayed, first in the Belvedere, and then in the library, where it still greets readers today. Ostensibly, the monument provides an example of early Christian iconography, an illustration of chronological scholarship, and a source for Hippolytus’ life and subsequent veneration. In practice, though, it has raised more questions than answers. In this paper, I will examine the discovery and early reception of the monument to see what that tells us about late Renaissance learning and about the statue itself.
