Endimião adormecido

Cima da Conegliano spent his career painting altarpieces, calm Madonnas set against the hills of his native Veneto. This little round panel, about the width of a dinner plate, is rarer for him: a pagan subject. Endymion was the shepherd whom the moon goddess loved so much that she laid him in an endless sleep, so she could visit him each night while he stayed young forever. Cima sets him in a wide landscape at dusk, more a sleeping man than a myth. Small mythologies like this were painted around 1507 for the private studies of educated Venetians, who were meeting the old stories again in the classical texts that Venice's own presses were then printing faster than anywhere in Europe.