“Cleopatra”, as she was then called, was later transferred to a niche on the upper terrace of the Belvedere and placed on a Roman sarcophagus adapted for a fountain (water jets beat from the holes of the sarcophagus). Rafael Santi made a drawing from the "fountain of the nymph" and used it for the figure of the Muse Euterpe on the Parnassus fresco in the Stanza della Senyatura of the Vatican Palace. This drawing was etched by his assistant Marcantonio Raimondi.
Such an unusual idea is explained by the popularity at the end of the 15th century of a pseudo-Latin epigraph published by M. F. Ferrarinus, prior of the Carmelite monastery in Reggio nel Emilia. The inscription was allegedly inscribed on the stone of the grotto of an ancient fountain somewhere in the Danube region with the image of a sleeping nymph: “Huius nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis, Dormio, dum blandae sentio murmur aquae. Parce meum, quisquis tangis caua marmora, somnum Rumpere. Sive bibas sive lavere tace ”(Nymph of this place, keeper of the sacred spring, I sleep, feeling the soothing murmur of water. Spare me, whoever touches the marble floor, do not wake me. Whether you are drinking or bathing, be silent).
The marble sculpture, slightly longer than human height, depicts a young woman asleep on a stone in a reclining position. She rests her cheek on her left hand, the right covers her head. The woman is dressed in a light tunic that leaves her breasts half-naked, and a veil is thrown over her legs, descending to the ground in complex folds. On the left shoulder of the figure is a bracelet folded into several coils, resembling a snake. Although the woman's eyelids are closed by sleep, her face conveys deep sadness or disappointment.