Notwithstanding the many masterpieces secured by Cardinal d'Este it was known from ancient records that the greatest treasures of the Villa Hadriana had escaped his eager search, having been so securely hidden on the invasion of the Goths, that they evaded as well all other plunderers. But early in the eighteenth century Gavin Hamilton, commissioned to secure antiques for the British Museum, drained an extensive marsh called the Pantello and found it to be the depository in which Belisarius had secreted the missing statues on the approach of Totila.[10] From this hiding-place there emerged between 1730 and 1780, the _Antinous_ of the museum of the Capitol and the relief of the Villa Albani together with the _Resting Faun_ of Praxiteles which so captivated the imagination of Hawthorne, and many another famous work of art now the glory of some far distant museum. Fortunately for Italy, England found a contesting bidder in Cardinal Albani, and the majority of the statues found in the Pantello were purchased by him. At the same time the magnificent collection of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, was offered at public sale by the degenerate spendthrift who inherited it, and sixty of the finest statues were secured for Villa Albani and rejoined their old companions. Winckelmann gloated over their beauty, for he united the artist's appreciation to the connoisseurship of the archaeologist. What solicitude for its appropriate setting, only surpassed by that of Hadrian himself, did he bestow on the placing of each individual statue, and with what exultation he records its arrival. "The Cardinal has brought from Tivoli on a _carro_ drawn by sixteen bullocks a female river deity of colossal size well preserved" (and still to be seen reclining on the margin of a reservoir). To the relief of _Antinous_ Winckelmann gave the place of honour which it now occupies. Let us read his own record of the esteem in which he held it. "The glory and the crown of sculpture in this age _as well as in all ages_" he does not hesitate to assert, "are two likenesses of Antinous." One of them, in the Albani villa, is in relief, the other is a colossal head in the Mondragone villa. "The former disinterred from Hadrian's villa is," says Winckelmann, "only a fragment of an entire figure which probably stood on a chariot. For the right hand, which is empty, is in a position that leads me to conclude that it must have held the reins. In this work therefore would have been represented the deification of Antinous as we know that figures so honoured were placed upon cars to signify their translation to the gods. [Illustration: Villa Albani] [Illustration: Casino, Villa Albani _Alinari_] [Illustration: _Alinari_ Candelabrum from Hadrian's Villa Museum of the Vatican] [Illustration: _Alinari_ Candelabrum from Hadrian's Villa Museum of the Vatican]