Borghese Hermaphroditus
Encyclopedia
Hermaphroditus
In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus or Hermaphroditos was the child of Aphrodite and Hermes. He was a minor deity of bisexuality and effeminacy. According to Ovid, born a remarkably handsome boy, he was transformed into an androgynous being by union with the water nymph Salmacis...
life size, reclining on a couch, with a form that is partly derived from ancient portrayals of Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
and other female nudes, and partly from contemporaneous feminised Hellenistic portrayals of Dionysus/Bacchus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
. It represents a subject that was much repeated in Hellenistic times and in ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, to judge from the number of versions that have chanced to survive. It derives its name from its best known examples, in marble, which were part of the Borghese collection
Borghese collection
The Borghese Collection is a collection of Roman sculptures, old masters and modern art collected by the Roman Borghese family, especially Cardinal Scipione Borghese, from the 17th century on. It includes major collections of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, and of ancient Roman art...
.
Martin Robertson
Martin Robertson
Charles Martin Robertson was a British scholar of classical art and archaeology and poet. He was the elder son of Donald Struan Robertson and Petica Coursolles, née Jones , who hosted a literary salon. Martin Robertson, as he was always known, attended the Leys School and Trinity College Cambridge...
described it as a good early Imperial Roman copy of a bronze original by the later of the two Hellenistic sculptors named Polycles
Polycles (155 BC)
Polycles was an ancient Greek sculptor, flourished about the 156th Olympiad , mentioned in Pliny's Natural History. In Pliny's list, the name of this Polycles is followed by Athenaeus, either to be taken as the name of another sculptor or as Polycles's birthplace. A Juno by him stood in the Portico...
; the original bronze was mentioned in Pliny's Natural History.
First example
The first example to be discovered, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, was unearthed in the grounds of Santa Maria della VittoriaSanta Maria della Vittoria
Santa Maria della Vittoria is a roman catholic titular church and minor basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary located in Rome, Italy. The church is known for the masterpiece of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the Cornaro Chapel, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa....
, near the Baths of Diocletian
Baths of Diocletian
The Baths of Diocletian in Rome were the grandest of the public baths, or thermae built by successive emperors. Diocletian's Baths, dedicated in 306, were the largest and most sumptuous of the imperial baths. The baths were built between the years 298 AD and 306 AD...
and within the bounds of the Gardens of Sallust
Gardens of Sallust
The Gardens of Sallust were Roman gardens developed by the Roman historian Sallust in the 1st century BC. The landscaped pleasure gardens occupied a large area in the northwestern sector of Rome, in what would become Region VI, between the Pincian and Quirinal hills, near the Via Salaria and later...
; the discovery was made either when the church foundations were being dug (in 1608) or when espalier
Espalier
Espalier is the horticultural and ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth by pruning and tying branches so that they grow into a flat plane, frequently in formal patterns, against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis, and also plants which have been shaped in this...
s were being planted. The sculpture was presented to the connoisseur, Cardinal Scipione Borghese
Scipione Borghese
Scipione Borghese was an Italian Cardinal, art collector and patron of the arts. A member of the Borghese family, he was the patron of the painter Caravaggio and the artist Bernini...
, who in return granted the order the services of his architect Giovanni Battista Soria
Giovanni Battista Soria
thumb|250px|Façade of [[Santa Caterina a Magnanapoli]] in [[Rome]], with the [[Torre delle Milizie]] behind.Giovanni Battista Soria was an Italian architect who lived and worked mostly in Rome....
and paid for the façade of the church, albeit sixteen years later. In his new Villa Borghese
Galleria Borghese
The Borghese Gallery is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. It is a building that was from the first integral with its gardens, nowadays considered quite separately by tourists as the Villa Borghese gardens...
, a room called the 'Room of the Hermaphrodite' was devoted to it.
In 1620 Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...
, Scipione's protégé, was paid sixty scudi for making the buttoned mattress upon which the Hermaphroditus reclines, so strikingly realistic that visitors are inclined to give it a testing prod.
The sculpture was purchased in 1807 with many other pieces from the Borghese collection
Borghese collection
The Borghese Collection is a collection of Roman sculptures, old masters and modern art collected by the Roman Borghese family, especially Cardinal Scipione Borghese, from the 17th century on. It includes major collections of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, and of ancient Roman art...
, from principe Camillo Borghese, who had married Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte was the first sovereign Duchess of Guastalla, an imperial French Princess and the Princess consort of Sulmona and Rossano. She was the sixth child of Letizia Ramolino and Carlo Buonaparte, Corsica's representative to the court of King Louis XVI of France. Her elder brother,...
, and was transferred to the Musée du Louvre, where it inspired Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
's "Hermaphroditus" in 1863, and where it remains. Another 2nd century copy in the Borghese collection, found in 1781, has taken its place at the Villa Borghese
Galleria Borghese
The Borghese Gallery is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. It is a building that was from the first integral with its gardens, nowadays considered quite separately by tourists as the Villa Borghese gardens...
.
Second example
Other ancient copies
Other ancient copies are to be found at the UffiziUffizi
The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...
, Florence, and in the Vatican Museums
Vatican Museums
The Vatican Museums , in Viale Vaticano in Rome, inside the Vatican City, are among the greatest museums in the world, since they display works from the immense collection built up by the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries, including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and...
.
Modern copies
Many copies have been produced since the Renaissance, in a variety of media and scales. Full size ones were produced for Philip IV of SpainPhilip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...
in bronze, ordered by Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
and now in the Prado Museum, and for Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de 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
Giovanni Francesco Susini
Giovanni Francesco Susini was a Mannerist Florentine sculptor in bronze and marble, trained in the workshop of Giambologna....
, is now at the Metropolitan Museum. Another reduced-scale copy, this time produced in ivory by François Duquesnoy
François Duquesnoy
François Duquesnoy was a Baroque sculptor in Rome. His more idealized representations are often contrasted with the emotional character of Bernini's works, while his style shows greater affinity to Algardi's sculptures....
, was purchased in Rome by John Evelyn
John Evelyn
John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February...
in the 1640s .