Sleeping Female Figure (Chalepas)

The statue depicts a young girl, Sophia Afentaki, sleeping on a couch with a cross in her hand.

[1] The girl depicted, Sophia Afentaki, was born in Athens in 1856, to a family with origins from the Aegean island of Cimolus.

[2] The statue of the sleeping girl depicts Sophia Afentaki in white marble lying on a couch, on crumpled sheets.

Her head rests gently on the richly embroidered pillow as she holds a cross in one hand resting on her chest, while her other hand falls gently on the sheets with one leg slightly bent and raised, so that the sculpture gives the impression that the girl has merely fallen asleep.

[2] The Sleeping Female Figure still adorns the First Cemetery of Athens to this day,[2] while a plaster casting of it is kept in the National Glyptotheque of Greece.