Diana and Endymion

Jérôme-Martin Langlois's Diana and Endymion (1822) depicts the myth of the moon goddess who fell in love with the beautiful shepherd Endymion and visited him each night while he slept an eternal sleep on Mount Latmos. The subject, with its melancholy mixture of beauty and inaccessibility, was popular throughout the Neoclassical and Romantic periods as an image of perfect, unconsummated love. Langlois, a student of David, treats the myth with the formal clarity of his master's school while allowing the moonlit nocturnal setting to introduce a Romantic atmosphere. The painting is now in the Louvre.

Langlois composes the scene with Diana descending from her chariot to regard the sleeping Endymion — the contrast between her luminous, standing figure and his recumbent form creating the central visual and emotional tension. The moonlit palette is cool and silvery, with the goddess's drapery and the sleeping shepherd's pale skin as the composition's light points against a dark landscape.