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The Sleeping Hermaphroditus is a marble figure of the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, lying face down on a mattress, apparently asleep. From behind, the body reads as female; the surprise of the sculpture is that the figure is male, and the pose was designed so that the viewer walks around it and discovers the truth. The work is a Roman copy of a Greek original, probably of the second century BC, and it was found in Rome in 1608 near the Baths of Diocletian.
The mattress the figure lies on is not ancient. It was carved by the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1620, at the age of twenty-two, and it is one of the most virtuoso pieces of marble carving in existence: the fabric sinks under the body’s weight, the buttons are pressed into the ticking, and the surface is polished to look like silk. The contrast between Bernini’s restless, realistic mattress and the calm, idealised antique body is the whole point of the display.
The sculpture was in the Borghese collection until 1807, when Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Prince Camillo Borghese, was persuaded to sell it - along with much of the rest of the collection - to the French state. It has been in the Louvre since 1807.
The original sculptor is unknown; the work is a Roman copy after a Greek original of the second century BC, sometimes attributed to the workshop of Polycles. The mattress was carved by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), the greatest sculptor of the Baroque, who was twenty-two when he made it.
Hermaphroditus was a popular subject in Hellenistic and Roman art, and the sleeping type was designed for gardens and baths, where the viewer would approach from behind. The Borghese sale of 1807 was one of the largest single acquisitions in the Louvre’s history and gave the museum its core collection of Roman sculpture.
Sully Wing · Ground Floor · Roman Antiquities, Room 348
The Louvre is divided into three wings — Denon, Sully and Richelieu — reached from the hall beneath the glass pyramid.
Other pieces from the same artist, period or type of object.
