This sculpture is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Museum's website (
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"Autumn in the Guise of Priapus (one of a pair)
Artist: Pietro Bernini (Italian, 1562–1629)
Artist: Assisted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, Naples 1598–1680 Rome)
Date: 1616–17
Culture: Italian, Rome
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: confirmed: 89 5/8 × 30 5/8 × 27 5/8 in., 2531 lb. (227.6 × 77.8 × 70.2 cm, 1148.1 kg) Pedestal, confirmed: 42 1/2 × 30 × 30 in., 2725 lb. (108 × 76.2 × 76.2 cm, 1236.1 kg)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Purchase, The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 1990
Accession Number: 1990.53.2
On view in Gallery 534
This term and its mate, Flora, were executed in Rome for Cardinal Scipione Borghese and placed at the main entrance of the Villa Borghese."
See the work's mate at (
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Wikipedia (
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"In Greek mythology, Priapus ..., was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism. He became a popular figure in Roman erotic art and Latin literature, and is the subject of the often humorously obscene collection of verse called the Priapeia.
Relationship with other deities
Priapus was described as the son of Aphrodite by Dionysus, or the son of Dionysus and Chione, perhaps as the father or son of Hermes, and the son of Zeus or Pan, depending on the source. According to legend, Hera cursed him with impotence, ugliness and foul-mindedness while he was still in Aphrodite's womb, in revenge for the hero Paris having the temerity to judge Aphrodite more beautiful than Hera. The other gods refused to allow him to live on Mount Olympus and threw him down to Earth, leaving him on a hillside. He was eventually found by shepherds and was brought up by them.
Priapus joined Pan and the satyrs as a spirit of fertility and growth, though he was perennially frustrated by his impotence. In a ribald anecdote told by Ovid, he attempted to rape the goddess Hestia but was thwarted by an ass, whose braying caused him to lose his erection at the critical moment and woke Hestia. The episode gave him a lasting hatred of asses and a willingness to see them destroyed in his honour. The emblem of his lustful nature was his permanent erection and his large penis. Another myth states that he pursued the nymph Lotis until the gods took pity on her and turned her into a lotus plant.
Worship and attributes
Priapus depicted with the attributes of Mercury in a fresco found at Pompeii
The first extant mention of Priapus is in the eponymous comedy Priapus, written in the 4th century BC by Xenarchus. Originally worshipped by Greek colonists in Lampsacus in Asia Minor, the cult of Priapus spread to mainland Greece and eventually to Italy during the 3rd century BC. Lucian (De saltatione) tells that in Bithynia Priapus was accounted as a warlike god, a rustic tutor to the infant Ares, "who taught him dancing first and war only afterwards," Karl Kerenyi observed.[10] Arnobius is aware of the importance accorded Priapus in this region near the Hellespont. Also, Pausanias notes:
This god is worshipped where goats and sheep pasture or there are swarms of bees; but by the people of Lampsacus he is more revered than any other god, being called by them a son of Dionysus and Aphrodite.
In later antiquity, his worship meant little more than a cult of sophisticated pornography."