The theme of the bird man comes from antiquity, In ancient Egypt, he appeared as Horus, a god with a man's body and the head of a falcon. [...] The bird man theme appared in Dalis oeuvre already in 1947 in, Les Perroquets toreadors. This work is in reality a rerouting of l'Antinous from the Belvedere gardens of the Vatican in Rome. Antinous, a young Bythinian Greek who drowned himself in the Nile, was a slave and later a favorite of the Empereor Hadrian. - About the sculpture from Sculptures & Objects Dali by Robert & Nicolas Descharnes