Hypnos

Roman workshop

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Roman workshop

Ancient Rome (Italy)

Hypnos

120 - 130. Marble.
Room 072

In his essential 1862 survey of ancient sculpture in the Spanish capital, Emil Hübner praised this unique piece as "the finest jewel in the Madrid Museum". Yet despite its importance, very little information is available on its origins and its presence in the royal collection. Hübner himself notes that, according to an "unreliable" oral source, it came from the palace of the Duke of Frías in Valladolid, but offered no certainty regarding this claim.

While the sculpture is unquestionably listed in the Prado inventories from 1834 onwards, its remote origin has prompted doubts as to its whereabouts prior to that date; Graziella Becatti recently suggested that it may even have entered the royal collection under Philip II. The fact that in 1557 Cardinal Montepulciano was granted papal permission to export two sculptures from Rome, a Mercury and "a girl removing a thorn from her foot", led Becatti to speculate that the Mercury may in fact have been the Prado Hypnos. In support of this hypothesis, she quotes from a contemporary account of Pope Leo X´s ceremonial entry into Rome in 1513, according to which the remarkable ancient statues displayed to mark the pope´s progress included a "Mercury Running" – a pose not commonly associated with depictions of the messenger of the gods – belonging to the De´ Rossi family.

The question of mistaken identity is compounded by the fact that the iconography itself was not correctly identified until 1851. Prior to that date, the figure was classified as Mercury, because he was thought to be wearing a winged helmet, whereas in fact the wings are part of his head. Had his arms not been lost, the symbolism would have been much more readily apparent: he would have held two poppy stems in one hand, and in the other the horn from which he poured the drops of nectar that put mortals to sleep.

In any case, and despite the mutilations with which it has come down to us, there can be no doubting either the compositional importance or the unquestionable appeal of this piece, which stems from the precision with which it conveys the sense of movement, freezing the dynamic gesture in marble. The god of sleep is captured in mid-stride, intent upon his swift never-ending race to dispense, night after night, the numbing fluid that plunges mankind into restful sleep.

The telling eloquence of the gesture – above all, the capturing of an instant, the pent-up tension of the race, the lateral perspective – derives from the placing of the legs, using a kinetic approach that was to provide a model for artists throughout history, and which links this sculpture to other well-known compositions. In 1846, the German traveller De Quandt compared it to the socalled Borghese Gladiator, a classical sculpture reproduced ad infinitum in the most varied materials, an exquisite academy piece and a constant point of reference, without which it would be impossible to chart the modern history of sculpture and of painting too, such was its importance as a model for artists.

One could construct a whole corpus of works in which similar techniques were used, including the male figures adorning the famous Achilles sarcophagus from the same Borghese collection, now in the Louvre; these, and others like them, formed part of the essential repertoire for art students in Baroque Rome, and were still being drawn, engraved, and examined in the days of Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

Arias Martínez, Manuel, 'Taller romano. Hypnos'. En: Guido Reni, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2023, p.312 nº 60

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Inventory number: E000089
Author: Roman workshop
Title: Hypnos
Date: 120 - 130
Technique: Sculpted
Medium: Marble
Dimension: Height: 151 cm; Weight: 244 Kg; Width: 57 cm; Depth: 97 cm
Provenance: Collection of Gabriele De' Rossi, Casa della Statua, Roma, 1513 (?); </br>Donated to the Royal House, 1557; Royal Collection

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