Yet the copy at the National Museum in Rome shows to be made of plaster, and the piece located at the Louvre in Paris is a Roman copy after the original made of marble in the 2nd century BC. The 169 cm woman in Rome seems to be in pretty good condition, yet she is missing the bottom portion of her left leg and from images, she doesn't appear to have been restored in any way. The woman at the Louvre, however is in fabulous condition, with no portions missing, and the marble clean and restored. This work also connects with later centuries of marble statuary, specifically Baroque Italian Art where the famous architect and sculpture Roberto Bernini was asked to sculpt "the voluptuous mattress upon which the antique statue now reposes." .
Looking at the Sleeping Hermaphrodite in an iconographic light, one can tell that the piece depicts a mythological creature. Because of the beings idealist nature, it resembles that of a Greek god or goddess. In the case of Hermaphrodite, or Hermaphroditus - a creature that was partly male and partly female. One legend has him being a handsome male, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Supposedly "a nymph (Salmacis) fell in love with him and beseeched the gods to be forever united with him. They answered her prayers by fusing the two together thereby creating a being that was half male and half female". This is according to Ancient Greek mythology, also stating that her mother, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty, born from the foam of the sea that arose when Uranus' severed penis fell into the ocean. She represented sex, affection, and the attraction that binds people together. Yet she was the mother of Hermaphrodite with her notorious lover Hermes as the father, he!.
is known as the cleverest of the Olympian gods, and messenger to all the other gods. He ruled over wealth, good fortune, commerce, fertility, and thievery. He brought the souls of the dead to the underworld, and was honored as the god of sleep.
* * * * 75 And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! ... morning coat: a formal coat with tail. 52. ... high sentence: a phrase from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, meaning "elevated, serious and moral thoughts expressed formally." 119. ...