Sleeping Hermaphroditus

In 1618 this figure turned up in the grounds of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, a church then being built near the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, took it for himself and in return paid for the rest of the church's facade.

Two years later his young protégé, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, was paid 60 scudi to carve the mattress and pillow it lies on. The buttoned tufts and the dented cushion under the sleeping body are Baroque work, added about 1,500 years after the figure itself. That same year the tip of the nose and the feet were remade.

The statue stayed with the family until 1807, when Prince Camillo Borghese sold it to Napoleon. The Louvre also keeps four modern sphinx busts that once served as the legs of its bed.