Endymion (2021) Original Oil Painting by Nicolas Maureau

Silver shorts catching light like moonlight itself: The Sleep of Endymion takes up the myth of Selene, goddess of the moon, who fell for the shepherd Endymion and asked Zeus to hold him in eternal sleep rather than let his beauty fade.

Artists have returned to this sleep since antiquity, in marble as often as paint, and the best known version is probably Girodet's 1790 painting, all pale light and soft shadow. Maureau's version leans somewhere between Baroque excess and something more pared back, the silver of the shorts doing quietly what Girodet's moonlight did more theatrically, tying the body directly to the goddess who put him there.

Endymion never wakes in any version of this myth, and that's the point. He stays exactly at the edge of consciousness, beautiful because he can never answer for it.

Materials used:

oil painting

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 130 x 97 x 2cm (unframed) / 130 x 97cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Photorealistic
• Subject: People and portraits