page_title: Sleeping Hermaphroditus
section_title: Modern copies
hierarchical_section_title: Sleeping Hermaphroditus / Modern copies
caption_attribution_description: Italian, Florence; Statuette; Sculpture-Bronze
context_page_description: The Sleeping Hermaphroditus is an ancient marble sculpture depicting Hermaphroditus life size. In 1620, Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted the mattress upon which the statue now lies. The form is partly derived from ancient portrayals of Venus and other female nudes, and partly from contemporaneous feminised Hellenistic portrayals of Dionysus/Bacchus. It represents a subject that was much repeated in Hellenistic times and in ancient Rome, to judge from the number of versions that have survived. Discovered at Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, the Sleeping Hermaphroditus was immediately claimed by Cardinal Scipione Borghese and became part of the Borghese Collection. The "Borghese Hermaphroditus" was later sold to the occupying French and was moved to The Louvre, where it is on display.
  The Sleeping Hermaphroditus has been described as a good early Imperial Roman copy of a bronze original by the later of the two Hellenistic sculptors named Polycles; the original bronze was mentioned in Pliny's Natural History.
context_section_description: Many copies have been produced since the Renaissance, in a variety of media and scales. Full size copies were produced for Philip IV of Spain in bronze, ordered by Velázquez and now in the Prado Museum, and for Versailles (by the sculptor Martin Carlier, in marble). The composition has clearly influenced Velázquez's painting of the Rokeby Venus, now in London. A reduced-scale bronze copy, made and signed by Giovanni Francesco Susini, is now at the Metropolitan Museum. Another reduced-scale copy, this time produced in ivory by François Duquesnoy, was purchased in Rome by John Evelyn in the 1640s. American artist Barry X Ball produced a life-size copy after the Louvre's version, made from Belgian black marble on a Carrara marble base, which was completed in 2010.
  This sculpture was offered at Christies NY for sale, 10 May 2016. Estimated price $500,000-800,000.
caption: Bronze example at the Metropolitan Museum
exif: {}