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Jean Antoine (Antonin) Marie Idrac
(1849-1884)
Mercury Inventing the Caduceus

Veined marble; Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Jean Antoine Marie Idrac
Born in Toulouse, Idrac studied under Guillaume and Falguière, and won the Prix de Rome in 1869. He exhibited at the Salon from 1877, winning a first class medal in 1879.

Mercury Inventing the Caduceus
When Mercury was looking for something that would symbolise his role as the god of healing and messenger of the gods, he came across a pair of serpents coiled upon a twig. He instantly froze the snakes in place and picked up the twig to use as his staff of office. The serpent-coiled staff, or caduceus, sometimes depicted with wings at the top to match Mercury’s winged helmet, has since been adopted by the medical profession as a symbol of healing. By an interesting coincidence the entwined snakes resemble a diagram of a DNA molecule with its characteristic double-helix shape.
There is another reference to a statue of Mercury with a caduceus in my illustrated story “On Display”.
As always, do not follow this link if you are offended by sexual content.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Idrac chose this subject just so he could depict the nude Mercury in a crouching position....

This statue is now on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris (Orsay English Hompage).

A virtual walk around the statue
Taken from various sources.
Thanks to Anonymous Benefactor for supplying three of these images. One of his pictures
unfortunately came out a bit blurred, but it shows the statue from an - ahem - interesting angle.
Three new images added November 2013. A fourth, taken from TripAdvisor, was added March 2018.

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