From the fifteenth century, the damaged and disfigured remains of ancient statues called for inspired restorations. Like Homer’s sorceress Circe, who transformed men into beasts by waving her wand, restorers invoked the power of metamorphosis by wielding their chisels to re-create antiquities with new poses, traits, attributes, and settings. Artists subverted the original meanings of ancient fragments with their interventions, serving as a prelude to the modernist impulse to upend the past. An exploration of real and imagined early modern restorations, Circe’s Wand attests to the erudition and astonishing invention required of the restorer as well as the way restorations influence how we remember and interpret the ancient world. My dissertation’s four chapters investigate different facets of restoration, examining how artists injected early modern sociopolitical meaning, engaged with antiquarian and intellectual currents, invented relationships for patrons to ancient myth and history, and reimagined still-fragmentary antiquities in diverse media. Drawing upon the philosophy of imagination and memory studies, my project illuminates the intellectual and creative processes of appropriating and resuscitating antiquity, presaging current debates about the interpretation, repurposing, and conservation of historic monuments.