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The two copies of “Sleeping Hermaphroditus“ filmed in Paris and in Rome. “This work is a Roman copy that was probably inspired by a Greek original of the 2nd century BC. Pliny the Elder cites a Hermaphroditus Nobilis by Polykles (Natural History, XXXIV, 80), but since he does not describe it, one hesitates to compare it with this sleeping Hermaphroditos. The subject reflects the taste for languid nudes, surprise effects, and theatricality, all of which were prized in the late Hellenistic period. The work is designed to be viewed in two stages. First impressions are of a gracious and sensuous body that leads one to think that the figure is a female nude in the Hellenistic tradition; this effect is heightened here by the sinuousness of the pose. The other side of the statue then brings a surprise, revealing the figure's androgynous nature by means of the crudest realism. This effect of contrast and ambiguity, indeed this taste for the strange that plays with the viewer's emotions, is t
