Diana and Endymion, Michele Rocca (1666 - 1751)

Michele Rocca
(Parma 1666- Venice 1751)

"Diana and Endymion"

Oil painting on canvas
Measures cm. 97 x 72
Frame cm. 142 x 118
Very good condition

The painting was professionally cleaned and put on a new stretcher to bring the canvas into perfect tension, avoiding lining and maintaining the original canvas.

Magnificent oil painting on canvas depicting one of the most fascinating scenes of Greek and Roman mythology.
The Myth of Diana and Endymion is narrated in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and tells the story linked to Diana, Goddess of hunting and the Moon, and her impossible love for the young mortal shepherd Endymion.
Diana was madly in love with this beautiful shepherd and she asked her father Zeus to give him her eternal youth. Zeus partially satisfied her daughter's requests, but in addition to not making him age, he made Endymion sink into an eternal sleep. Diana had no choice but to go and admire her beloved who was sleeping unaware. With this myth it was explained, in ancient times, why, on certain nights, the sky was without the Moon: the Goddess in love came down from the sky with her chariot pulled by swans to go and find her love who was asleep.

The canvas is painted in a masterly manner and the naked bodies of the two protagonists, arranged horizontally on top of each other, are truly splendid. The Goddess with diaphanous skin full of sensual femininity, and the beautiful Young Man lying in a languid and virile pose. Two winged cherubs hold Endymion to show him to Diana while two others flutter in the sky around the carriage pulled by swans, from which the Goddess alighted.

The composition is particularly successful and the nudity of the elegant figures stand out excellently in the setting full of lights and shadows of the river undergrowth.
The work must be attributed to the talented Parma master Michele Rocca whose workshop specialized in the creation of historical and mythological paintings that were always very complex and scenographic.