The whereabouts of LawrenceвЂ™s Hypnos are unrecorded, but a friend of mine has good reason to believe he owns it (but thatвЂ™s another story), so IвЂ™m in a bit of a friendly competition to get one of my own-and now I have it. A wonderful home ornament for lovers of classical sculpture and mythology. He was a deity who personified sleep, and lived in the underworld Hades. Hypnos was the son of Nyx ad Erebus, and the twin of Thanatos. He wrote to a friend: вЂњnothing, not even the dawn-can disturb me in my curtains: only the slow crumblings of the coals in the fire: they get so red & throw such splendid glimmerings on the Hypnos.вЂќ He also wrote вЂњI would rather possess a fine piece of sculpture than anything in the world.вЂќ The original Roman bronze is a copy of a complete ancient Greek marble statue which dates to the 4 th century BC. 35 A particularly well-preserved example of Hypnos is the small statue in the. Lawrence (вЂњLawrence of ArabiaвЂќ) passed through Naples and wrote a friend вЂњThe bronzes in the Naples museum are beyond words.вЂќ Lawrence visited a Neapolitan bronze foundry and bought a cheap, flawed freehand copy of the bronze Hypnos head now in the British Museum. The Bronze Statue of Sleeping Eros in the Metropolitan Museum has long. He mainly appeared on vases and sculptures. Hypnos inspired many Hellenistic artists. His island was dream-like and supported the lives of his children.

In HomerвЂ™s Iliad, Hypnos is said to live on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean sea. His attributes, opium poppies in his left hand and a small horn in his outstretched right hand, are lost on this statue. Another version of HypnosвЂ™ living arrangement comes from the ancient Greek poet Homer. Hypnos traveled around the world on wings, making the living drowsy. In 1909, when he was on his way back from a tour of Syria, T. This personification of dreams (' Hypnos )' is the brother of Death and son of Night and Erebus (the darkness of hell).

The whole package makes for a remarkable artifact of otherworldliness which has spoken to people across time. The subject: the god of sleep, father to Morpheus, god of dreams-the design: the pieceвЂ™s odd asymmetry, the single wing, and the missing wing, the ambiguous gender. But if there are sculptures that resonate with and might be able to communicate some of that weirdness, the ancient bronze Head of Hypnos in the British Museum is one of them. Like a dream, it needs to be experienced to be appreciated. ThereвЂ™s something surreal about the whole scan/edit/print process thatвЂ™s hard to describe.

Hypnos statue