Aurora and Cephalus

François Boucher

1769

Oil on canvas, Oil, Canvas

J. Paul Getty Museum

A winged cherub descends from the clouds towards a sleeping young man lying on the ground, accompanied by a dog. The cherub holds flowers, and the young man rests near a quiver of arrows. In this tall decorative panel, Aurora, the goddess of dawn, gazes longingly upon the sleeping mortal Cephalus, with whom she has fallen madly in love. Here, François Boucher used light, pastel colors and the broad, rapid brushstrokes found in his tapestry designs. The sky is blue tinged with pink, and there is a suggestion of dawn awakening as light appears on the horizon. In contrast to Aurora's ethereality, Cephalus and his sleeping dog are bound to the earth; Boucher's choice of colors for these two figures—greens, reds, browns, and blues—accentuate this fact. In 1768, Jean-François Bergeret de Frouville commissioned a set of six