Selene and Endymion

BERNARD PICART (1673-1733)

Amsterdam, 1733.

Etching and burin on laid paper.

Print of the work: Scene or description of the magnificent temple of singing godesses. Temple of the Muses published by H. Chatelain (illustrated version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses).

Good condition. With margins.

Among the Greek deifications of the Moon, Selene was the oldest and therefore the least ambiguous when it came to incarnating it. She was the daughter of the titans Thea and Hyperion and sister, as could not be less, of Helios, the sun, and Eos, the dawn.

Selene is known to have several lovers, among whom it is worth mentioning the cuckolded demigod Pan. But, without a doubt, her most famous romance was with the shepherd Endymion. The myth of her tells that the goddess was so captivated by her beauty that she asked Zeus to grant her eternal life, a wish to which the god agreed in exchange for her sleeping. One more example of how in the unequal trade of favors with the gods, every benefit has its price.

In the representations of the myth of Selene and Endymion, a curious exchange of roles occurs in the arrangement of the characters and in the traditional expression of genres in art. In these images, the recumbent Endymion is represented as the passive object of desire and object of erotic contemplation. Meanwhile, from the heights, a Selene descends, captive and longing, whose turn it is to play the active role in this drama of impossible loves.