Sleeping Hermaphroditus at the Louvre, Paris, France

The Sleeping Hermaphroditus is an ancient marble sculpture depicting a life sized Hermaphroditus, reclining on a mattress sculpted by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1620. 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.