Una celebrazione poetica del Cortile delle Statue e della Cleopatra in Vaticano: Aurelio Serena da Monopoli

This article focuses on the antiquarian and literary fortune of the ancient statues that Pope Julius II exhibited in the Belvedere Courtyard of the Vatican in the last years of his papacy. More specifically, in the present article two texts are published and analyzed which are to be considered – as far as we know – the earliest literary celebrations of the statues, namely two Latin poems printed in Rome on 8 March 1512 and written by Aurelio Serena, a humanist from Monopoli in Apulia. The first of these compositions is devoted entirely to the statue of ‘Cleopatra’, today known as the ‘Sleeping Ariadne’, while the second presents a general overview of the Vatican palaces, with mention of the five major attractions of the Belvedere Courtyard – the statues of ‘Laocoön and His Sons’, ‘Apollo Belvedere’, ‘Venus Felix’, ‘Cleopatra/Ariadne’, and ‘Tiber’.