Sleeping Hermaphroditus

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s the Sleeping Hermaphroditus whose mattress he was asked to make in 1620, was a young artist and excelled in detail. The statue is probably from Roman times, almost certainly a copy of a bronze original made in the second century BC.

It is preserved in the Louvre Paris.

The story of Hermaphroditus is conveyed to us by Ovid who tells it in the Metamorphoses.

The young man is handsome, about 15 years old, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, in whose face were concealed the features of both parents from whom he also drew his name, which Ovid reveals only at the end of the tale.

Hermaphroditus was reared by the Naiads, as soon as he had turned 15, he returned to his native land, enjoyed wandering in the woods, discovering unknown lands, arrived in Caria, in the territory of Halicarnassus, he came across a pond of very clear water, where lived a nymph named Salamacia.

Salamacia while picking flowers sees at the spring the handsome son of Aphrodite.

The meeting between the two sets in motion a precipitous chain of events, which sees the Nymph instantly enamored of the young man.

Moved by her frivolous nature the maiden tries to seduce him with poetic words, but being unsuccessful she takes action, excited by the inexperience of the boy who knows only how to blush at the girl's advances.

The boy rejects her, and to save himself from so much impetus he throws himself into the pond, but the girl chases after him and she too throws herself into the waters, a struggle ensues, the boy rejects her, but the girl embraces him, kisses him and addresses a prayer to the gods, that she should never part with him.

But unbelievably the gods grant her prayer, the bodies entwined in the struggle merge together and take on a single appearance: a dual form, neither woman nor man and yet resembling both.

The new creature is the fusion of two genders, although only the young man emerges from the pond, whose name Ovid finally reveals : Hermaphroditus, entered the water man comes out half man half woman.