How this Ancient Greek sculpture captures the purity 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 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."

Curator Seán Hemingway on "Bronze statue of Eros sleeping."

Explore this object:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/254502

Throughout 2013, The Met invited curators from across the Museum to each talk about one artwork that changed the way they see the world. Each episode is interpreted by a Museum photographer.

Photography by Juan Trujillo

Drawing of Cast Sections of the Bronze Statue of Sleeping Eros by Allia Benner.
X-radiograph images courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation

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Contributors

Séan Hemingway
John A. And Carole O. Moran Curator in Charge, Department of Greek and Roman Art

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Bronze statue of Eros sleeping, Bronze, Greek
Greek
3rd–2nd century BCE