c. 1700

Diana and Endymion

Italian, 1628 - 1719

Cignani was a critical link between Bologna's great seventeenth-century classicizing tradition and its eighteenth-century inheritors. He had the honor of being named the first and only "director for life" of the city's art academy, the Accademia Clementina. This drawing shows a scene from Greek mythology in which Endymion, a handsome shepherd kept ever youthful through eternal sleep, is adored by the moon goddess Selene, or Diana.