[Illustration: FIG. 11.12 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Piazza d’Oro. (H. Winnefeld)] The part of the complex which shows Hadrian’s full genius is the palace-block, south of the portico (plan A-I). Here the vastness, sweep, and richness of the _Piazza d’Oro_ comes to its climax in a design which has been called lyrical, feminine, and even Mozartian. Here, if anywhere, can be detected the influence of Antinous. The frieze-motif, for example, is Cupids (riding sea-monsters), but since this theme is borrowed from the _Teatro Marittimo_, which, at least in its earliest phase, antedates Antinous, too much should not be made of it. The center of the composition is the four-leaf-clover room at A, with a fountain in the middle. Its walls sweep in and out, with a sinuous, wave-like movement, as though the room were alive, and breathing. The outswinging arcs open into light-wells (C,C; B is a curved nymphaeum, with statue-niches alternately curved and rectilinear, from beneath which the water flowed down steps into a reflecting pool; the fourth side is the entrance). The inswinging arcs open into bell-shaped rooms (a,a,a,a). These serve to counter the thrust of the centrally-pierced cupola (see the reconstruction, Fig. 11.13), which may have successfully solved the problem of transition from octagonal ground-plan to circular dome. The cupola was supported (none too well, for it has fallen and left no trace) on eight delicate piers, in what we now see to be Hadrian’s standard but ever-varied manner. The six tiny apsidal rooms (b) are latrines; their water-supply came from fountains at the back of the bell-shaped diagonal rooms, yet another example of the Roman combination of the useful with the ornamental. Off the central clover-leaf open on each side five rectangular rooms (I is a late addition), all but one barrel-vaulted; the exception (G) had a cross-vault. Each set opens onto a light well. At the back of the central room (E) in each set is a statue-niche. The view from the back of these rooms runs, as in the _Teatro Marittimo_, through variegated light and shade. E was diagonally lit from the light-well; the light-well itself, a variant on the conventional atrium, had probably a square _compluvium_, or open skylight; the central room was lit by the round cupola-aperture, and so on. The whole design, with its indirect lighting, plays of water, and works of art, is light and gay, reflecting the Emperor’s brief years of pleasure with his _inamorato_; what the Empress Sabina thought is not recorded. But here again is the tension that comes from an inaccessible midpoint. And whose statues were in the niches? Whatever may have been the case in Antinous’ lifetime, after his death Hadrian deified him, identifying him with Apollo, Dionysus, Hermes, Silvanus, Osiris, and other gods, and surrounded himself with reminders of him in marble. Of the statues of Antinous in Roman museums, a number variously estimated at from sixteen to thirty comes from the villa.