A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female humanand the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. 

The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria c. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake and took the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid — human above the waist, fish below — although the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and arm, similar to the Babylonian god Ea.

In this sculpture we may recognize this jump of a woman in water. This particular position expresses freedom and liberation, but also a certain dispair, as the body offers itself to the void. This is emphasized by the full figure of the woman, a body which is typical of Matteo Lo Greco's work.