ITALIAN, AFTER THE ANTIQUE, CIRCA 1722

Since its discovery, the antique prototype of the Hermaphrodite, now housed in the Louvre, has entranced and perplexed onlookers. Unearthed near the Baths of Diocletian after 1613 but no later than 1620, the recumbent figure was bought by Cardinal Scipione Borghese for display at the Villa Borghese, Rome. Its distinguished pedigree was then heightened in 1620 when the quintessential master of baroque art, Gianlorenzo Bernini, was commissioned to restore the piece and to carve a mattress for it. It was subsequently purchased, along with much of the Borghese collection, in 1807 by Napoleon Bonaparte - brother-in-law to Prince Camillo Borghese.

No English Grand Tourist failed to make some sort of comment on this mesmerising subject; Dupaty made the not-uncommon comment to visitors of the Villa Borghese (Haskell and Penny op.cit., no. 48) not to look at the marble if they did not wish to blush with pleasure and shame at the same time. Clearly the presence of the male genitalia shocked and enthralled the English onlookers, which is presumably why so many reductions were commissioned - many including the penis and others without. The image was disseminated from as early as 1639, when Susini produced a version in bronze, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Francois Duquesnoy also carved it in ivory and Laurent Delvaux produced a number of groups in marble, one of which is presently in Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.