In 1736, Monsignor Alessandro Furietti purchased a permit to excavate the Accademia building at Hadrian's Villa for 500 scudi from the then owner, Simplicio Bulgarini, with the right to keep any finds for himself.
Bulgarini probably thought there was nothing to find, given that the building was in ruins, but this was not the case.
After a few days of excavation, Furietti uncovered the two magnificent statues of Centaurs in bigio-morato marble, the Old Centaur and the Young Centaur, which are now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
The most extraordinary discovery, however, occurred on April 19, 1737, Good Friday: the Mosaic of the Doves, one of the absolute masterpieces of mosaic art of all time. According to Piranesi, it was located in the rectangular room AC79, which opens onto the main axis of the Temple of Apollo in the Accademia.
As Furietti himself recounts in the book he dedicated to this and other discoveries, entitled De Musivis and published in 1752, the workers who were excavating found it «in the center of a large and noble room». They immediately notified him of the exceptional find, and Furietti, who was already in Tivoli on vacation, went there that same afternoon.
By inserting knives all around he panel and «having the stonecutters hammer them slowly and simultaneously», they managed to detach the panel from the floor, working until sunset. Furietti had it brought from Rome to be restored and made into a panel to be put on the wall as a painting.
The mosaic depicts a golden basin on which four doves are perched: the first two are standing still, one looking to the left and the other to the right; the third bows her head to drink the water from the basin itself, while the fourth cleans her feathers. The mosaic's background is dark, almost black, and in front of the marble slab it is a neutral color. The black-ground frame features a design of pearls and discs.
The tesserae are extremely small, 0.5 mm, which is the so called opus vermiculatum, a technique used for precious mosaic panels like this one, which would later be imitated in the minute mosaics of 18th-century Rome.
The panel with the Doves (the emblem) originally was placed in the center of the room, and around it ran a second, equally precious, outer frame with palmettes alternating with flowers on a black background, bordered at the top and bottom by pearls and discs, similar to those of the central emblem.
This was an "exclusive" pattern custom made only for emperor Hadrian, unparalleled. Several fragments of the outer frame are scattered in Museums throughout Europe.
From the moment of its discovery, the Mosaic of the Doves was thought to be Sosos' masterpiece, known from Pliny's description: «A dove drinking with its head casting a shadow on the water, while others bask in the sun, preening themselves, on the edge of a cantharus».
Scholars have long discussed whether the mosaic discovered by Furietti was actually the Hellenistic original which once was in Pergamon; since it was mounted on a marble slab, it may indeed have been transported to Tivoli to decorate the emperor's Villa.
The mosaic of the Doves and the two Centaurs were placed by Monsignor Furietti in his residence in the Palazzo di Montecitorio, becoming the destination of a veritable pilgrimage for scholars, scholars, and ancient art enthusiasts. Pope Benedict XIV asked him to purchase the Mosaic and the two Centaurs, as did pope Clement XIII. To no avail: Furietti refused all proposals.
But upon Furietti's death in 1765, his heirs were not allowed to export the mosaic to Bergamo, where they lived, and so they had to sell it, along with the two Centaurs, to Pope Clement XIII, who paid a 13,000 scudi and had them placed in the Capitoline Museums, where they still are today.