The first excavation at Villa Adriana of which we have historical record dates back to the end of the 15th century, during the pontificate of Pope Alexander VI Borgia (1492-1503). It was made in the Odeon, the southern theater of the Villa located near the Accademia, where according to antiquarian sources nine statues of Muses were found.
Like many other sculptures from Villa Adriana, the Muses of the Odeon became precious “anticaglie“ (antiques) sought after by the greatest collectors of the Renaissance: popes, cardinals, kings and nobles.
They were bought and sold several times, given as gifts or inherited, and are now in Spain in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. They are all attributed to Villa Adriana, but as we will see, only four of them were actually found in the Villa.
In his Codices on Hadrian's Villa, written in the mid-16th century, the great architect and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio refers to nine statues of seated Muses discovered during Alexander VI's excavations in the Odeon, therefore fifty years before the excavations of Pirro Ligorio in the Villa. The statues were sold to Pope Leo X Medici (1513-1521) who had them placed in Rome in his villa on Monte Mario, that is in the magnificent Villa Madama.
At Villa Madama the statues were seen and drawn by the Dutch painter Maarten van Heemskerck between 1532 and 1535, but in his drawings only four seated statues can be seen, in their original state of conservation, before the restorations that integrated the missing parts.
Villa Madama passed into the possession of the Farnese family, and in 1681 the new owner, Ranuccio II Farnese had the four sculptures restored as Polyhymnia, Erato, Terpsichore and Calliope, and then sold them to Queen Christina of Sweden, a great collector and lover of the arts, who after abdicating in favor of her cousin Charles Gustav had moved to Rome.
To house the four statues, the Queen had a Hall of the Muses built specifically in her Roman residence of Palazzo Riario (now Palazzo Corsini), where she had a magnificent library. There she created a circle of men of scholars and artists, which was the first nucleus of the Arcadian Literary Academy. To complete the group of Muses, she purchased four more seated Muses that had been found on the Esquiline in Rome, for a total of eight statues.
In 1689, upon the death of Christina of Sweden, the eight Muses were inherited by Cardinal Decio Azzolino, a great friend of hers; three years later, his nephew Pompeo sold them to Prince Livio Odescalchi who moved them to his Roman palace.
The Odescalchi collection was then sold by his heir Baldassarre to King Philip V of Spain, and the eight Muses were transferred to Spain to decorate the Royal Palace of La Granja in San Ildefonso, near Segovia.
In the nineteenth century, the sculptures were permanently moved to the Museo del Prado in Madrid, where they are still on display today.
The four statues that certainly were found in Hadrian's Villa depict the Muses Erato Tesicore, Calliope and Polyhymnia. The other five statues of "seated muses" mentioned by Ligorio and found in the Odeon can no longer be identified.
The nine Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory; with their dances they delighted the gods of Olympus, singing the origins of the world and the birth of gods and men. They knew the past, the present and the future, and protected human wisdom and the arts. The Muses were linked to the cult of Dionysus and Apollo; in honor of Zeus and the Muses the Olympic feasts were celebrated.
In the 7th century BC the Greek poet Hesiod was the first to list their names in his Theogony: Clio, Urania, Melpomene, Thalia, Terpsichore, Erato, Calliope, Euterpe and Polyhymnia. In the Hellenistic age, each of them became the patroness of a form of art or knowledge, with several variations over the centuries.
Clio was the Muse of History and epic song, depicted seted with a parchment in her hand; Urania was the Muse of Astronomy; Melpomene and Thalia were the Muses of Tragedy and Comedy. Terpsichore was the Muse of Lyric, holding the lyre; Erato was the Muse of Love Poetry, also depicted with the lyre; Calliope was the Muse of Elegy, Euterpe of Music and the sound of the flute, and finally Polyhymnia was the Muse of Dance and sacred songs.
Two busts of Melpomene and Thalia, the Muses of Tragedy and Comedy, were found in the Greek Theatre, which is located on the opposite side of Hadrian's Villa.