Nino Cesarini

Nino Cesarini
Portrait of Nino by Paul Hoecker
Born	Antonio Cesarini 30 September 1889 Rome, Italy
Died	25 October 1943 Rome, Italy

Antonio Cesarini (September 30, 1889 – October 25, 1943), better known by the diminutive name Nino, was a model for several artists, such as the photographer Wilhelm von Plüschow, painters Paul Hoecker and Umberto Brunelleschi and sculptor Francesco Jerace during his youth. In his adulthood he modeled for Vincenzo Gemito, who presented him as a prototype of homoerotic masculine beauty. He was also known for relationship with baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen. His life was novelized by the French writer Roger Peyrefitte in his work The Exile of Capri (L'exilé de Capri) in 1959

Nino Cesarini was born into a working-class family in 1889. According to Peyreffite, Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, who had been forced to leave Paris for a sexual scandal, met him in Rome on July 9, 1904, when Nino was a fourteen-year-old construction worker and newspapers seller. Fersen obtained authorization from the boy's family to take Nino as his secretary with him to Capri. They lived together in Villa Lysis. In order to immortalize his beauty, baron commissioned several artists to depict Nino. One of them was Umberto Brunelleschi, an Italian painter; another was the German painter Paul Hoecker, also exiled in Italy for the same motifs to those of Fersen. Finally, Fersen commissioned famous sculptor Francesco Jerace to case a statue of Nino in bronze and placed it in the garden of the villa towards the sea. It was also repeatedly photographed by Wilhelm von Plüschow, dressed as a Roman emperor and as a Christian saint. Copies of these photographs were widely circulated and it is possible that even Adelswärd-Fersen sold them commercially. The only image of the Nino's statue by Jerace is the von Plüschow's photograph.

In 1907 Fersen dedicated his work "Une Jeunesse / Les Baiser de Narcisse" to Nino, with the following phrase: "Dedicated to N. C. More beautiful than the light of Rome."