Hipólito-Virbio, San Hipólito y Pirro Ligorio

The goal of this paper is to study a double literary tradition derived from Hippolytus’ death, his resurrection by Asclepius and his second life in Italy as Virbius, the minor god of Diana’s sanctuary at Nemi (Latium). The Latin tradition (Virgil, Ovid, Seneca) leads to a christian saint, whose martyrdom we know through one of Prudentius’ hymns and whose history is complicated by the discovery in the 16th century of a statue restored by Pirro Ligorio and identified with the saint. On the other hand, Ligorio is related to the first epigraphic findings from Nemi-Aricia and was the ‘creator’ of a series of epigraphic fakes related to Hippolytus-Virbius. All this without forgetting that Ligorio’s patron was the cardinal Ippolito d’Este.