Nino Cesarini – Wikipedia

Nino Cesarini , sometimes mentioned with the personal name Antonio Cesarini ^[first] (Rome, September 30, 1889 – Rome, 25 October 1943), was an Italian model.
During his youth he placed for various artists, such as the painter Paul Hoecker and the sculptor Vincenzo Gemito, ^[first] which represented it as a prototype of male beauty in a highly homoerotic light.

Nino Cesarini grew in Rome in a family of modest social backgrounds. Following the meeting with Baron Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, his protector and life partner, he left Rome and the family to move to Capri with him. Fersen was building on the island a splendid home (Villa Lysis), dedicated to “Jeunesse d’Amour”, who adorned with statues and paintings depicting her young naked lover. ^[2]

Considered of particular beauty, Nino Cesarini posed for Paul Hoecker (whose portrait, of about 1904, recently re-emerged in the light) and for Umberto Brunelleschi (1879-1949). The Calabrian sculptor Francesco Jerace (1854-1937), sculpted a bronze statue of Nino Nudo (approx. 1906) which was placed on the external belvedere of the villa of Capri. Finally Vincenzo Gemito portrayed him in adulthood in a sketch in profile, still owned by Cesarini’s heirs.
Contrary to what is commonly heard, however, there is no proof of the fact that photographer Wilhelm von Plüschow portrayed him, despite existing his photos of Villa Lysis and Capri. Therefore, the shots of Plüschow normally attributed to him would actually refer to another model of the photographer.

After Fersen’s death, which took place in Capri on November 5, 1923 for overdose from cocaine, the lawyers of his family were insinuated the suspicion that Cesarini had poisoned him. In fact, in the will the baron left him a legacy of 300,000 francs and the annuity usufruct of Villa Lysis. But the necroscopic examination, performed in Rome on the corpse, thoroughly exonerated Cesarini who also agreed in exchange for 200,000 lire with the Fersen family for the renunciation of the usufruct of the villa, whose maintenance costs exceeded its economic possibilities , and definitively returned to live in his hometown. As indicated by Gianpaolo Furgiuele in the text Know , it is very likely that it was the pressures of a notable Neapolitan family who pushed Cesarini to the renunciation of Villa Lysis. Until his death he seems to have gained to live as newsagent.
In recent years his health had ended up being affected by the abuse of drugs (opium and cocaine) to which he had been induced by Baron Fersen.

His remains are buried in Rome in the monumental cemetery of Campo Verano.

• Robert Aldrich: The seduction of the Mediterranean: writing, art, and homosexual fantasy , Routledge, 1993. ISBN 978-0-415-09312-5.
• Whitney Davis: «Homoerotic Art Collection from 1750 to 1920», in Other objects of desire: collectors and collecting queerly . Editori: Michael Camille, Adrian Rifkin. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001; ISBN 978-0-631-23361-9.
• Giovanni Dall’Orto: ” Gémito, Vincenzo » in Who’s who in gay and lesbian history: from antiquity to World War II . Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon (curators). Routledge, 2003 (second edition); ISBN 978-0-415-15983-8.
• Scott Ryersson, Michael Orlando Yaccarino: Infinite variety: the life and legend of the Marchesa Casati . University of Minnesota Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8166-4520-6
• Keith Stern: Queers in history: the comprehensive encyclopedia of historical gays, lesbians and bisexuals, and transgenders . Prologo: Ian McKlls; Benbella Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-933771-87-8.
• Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen in Capri . are Frough.blogspot.com .
• Gianpaolo Furgiuele, Know Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen. Persona non grata, Lille-paris, ed. Laborintus, 2015 ISBN 979-1-09-446406-9
• Jacques of this, Nino and his twin , 2012 . Published on ISSUU in .pdf format (requires authentication to certify the age of majority), it is a examination of all the images of Nino Cesarini attributed to Wilhelm von PlueSchow. Based on iconographic comparisons, he concludes that none of them can be considered a portrait of it.