The Sleeping Hermaphrodite (Borghese)
attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 – Rome 1680)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1700
Materials
White marble
Measurements
520 x 275 mm
Place of origin
Italy
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486424
Summary
White marble sculpture, The Sleeping Hermaphrodite (Borghese), attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 – Rome 1680), circa 1700. According to the Roman poet, Ovid's Metamorphoses (4:285 - 288), Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite who refused the advances of one of Diana's nymphs, Salmacis. But the gods then answered her prayer that their bodies could be joined into one. The marble Hermaphrodite, lying on side with arms above the head, was unearthed near the Baths of Diocletian in Rome in about 1608. It was believed to be a Roman copy of a bronze mid-second century BC original by Polycles. It was presented to Cardinal Scipione Borghese who commissioned Bernini to restore it and make for it the marble mattress. It became one of the most admired statues in the Borghese Collection and was commonly reproduced in bronze and on a reduced scale in marble. In 1807 it was purchased with the bulk of the Borghese Collection by Napoleon and is now in the Louvre. This much reduced version, without a penis, was purchased in 1754 by the second Earl of Egremont.
Provenance
Purchased in 1754 by the second Earl of Egremont at the posthumous sale of the celebrated Dr Richard Mead (1673 - 1754); thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by HM Treasury
Marks and inscriptions
122 (painted on front in centre of the 'mattress')
Makers and roles
attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 – Rome 1680), sculptor
Exhibition history
Souvenirs of the Grand Tour, Wildenstein, London, 1982, no.67
References
Haskell and Penny 1981: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500 - 1900, New Haven and London, 1981, no. 48 , pp.234-35