Bronze statue of Eros sleeping
About this video
This Hellenistic bronze shows Eros, the god of love, as a sleeping baby, probably made as a religious dedication at a sanctuary. It replaces the earlier image of Eros as a cruel, capricious archer with one of innocent, pure love, and its naturalism, from the folded wings to the doughy baby flesh, contrasts with Classical art's 'miniature adults'.
You'll be able to
- explain how this sculpture changes the earlier image of Eros.
- describe the naturalism in how the sleeping baby is shown.
- compare how children were shown in Classical and Hellenistic art.
Key words
- Eros
- The Greek god of love, later known as Cupid.
- Sanctuary
- A sacred place where people dedicated objects in honor of the gods.
- Naturalism
- Showing things as they really look, like a baby's soft folds of skin.
- Hellenistic
- The later period of Greek art, interested in new subjects and lifelike detail.
Transcript
This is a Hellenistic bronze statue of Eros sleeping. It’s likely that it was a religious sculpture that was dedicated at a sanctuary, in honor of the gods. The artist has captured a moment where a child, the god of love, has just fallen asleep. It’s a totally new representation of Eros as this baby--and a sleeping baby.
The artist is capturing the purity of love, the innocence of love, which is different from how he’s portrayed in earlier periods often as this kind of cruel and capricious being, who could wound mortals with his arrows, causing burning desire or loathing. Here he's disarmed really.
one arrow from the quiver just by his head. and you get the power of it. It’s a brilliant way to capture the innocence and perfection and beauty of love. It’s so quiet that you don’t think of it as so radical, but actually it’s very rare and unusual to show a god sleeping. It’s not something that happened in Greek art very often.
From a technical standpoint the sculpture is outstanding. The statue is made in seven pieces: the legs, the arm, the head, the wing, the body, and then the drapery. This statue exhibits incredible naturalism in the way that the wings are folded closed like a bird’s, the way the flesh falls to the side, his arm just hangs down.
In the Classical period, children are represented as miniature adults; here, this naturalism where a baby is represented as a baby with the extra flesh, the folds of skin and that sort of doughy quality. Many people think of Classical art, they think of the Parthenon sculptures as the high point of Greek art.
But for me, the naturalism in this sculpture is remarkable. It’s powerful, and it’s hard for us even today to understand that because that becomes the paradigm. This superbeing, born out of chaos, becomes this baby, this Cupid. It’s become a cliché, which is what happens to great masterpieces, and yet when you’re in the presence of this statue you get it.
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