' Statue of Eros Sleeping ' Helenistic or Augustian, 3rd century BC -early 1st century AD. Bronze. Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York.

During the Hellenistic period young children enjoyed great favour , whether in mythological form, as baby Herakles or Eros , or in genre scenes ,playing with each other or with pets. This Eros, god of love, has been bought down to earth and charmingly disarmed ...... One of the few bronze statues to have survived from antiquity, this figure of a plump baby in relaxed pose conveys a sense of the immediacy and naturalistic detail that the medium of bronze made possible and is clearly based on firsthand observation.