Aurora and Cephalus (Guérin) explained

Aurora and Cephalus is an 1811 painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Measuring 251 × 178 cm, it illustrates lines 661-866 of Book 7 of Ovid's Metamorphoses and is a version the artist's 1810 work of the same subject. An oil sketch for the 1811 work has been in the Hermitage Museum since 1978 (inventory number GE-10310).[1]

It and Morpheus and Iris were commissioned by Prince Nikolay Yusupov for his Arkhangelskoye Palace, where it was first exhibited in the Psyche Salon.[2] In 1834 it was moved to the Moika Palace in St Petersburg and after the October Revolution it and other works from the Yusupov collection were seized for the national collection. In 1924 it entered the Hermitage Museum,[3] but in 1925 it was transferred to the new Pushkin Museum in Moscow.[4]

References

  1. Web site: Государственный Эрмитаж. — Герен, Пьер Нарсис. "Аврора и Кефал".
  2. Кузнецова И. А. Государственный музей изобразительных искусств имени А. С. Пушкина. Французская живопись XVI — первой половины XIX века. Каталог. — М.: Искусство, 1982. — С. 216.
  3. Березина В. Французская живопись первой половины и середины XIX века в Эрмитаже. Научный каталог. — Л.: Искусство, 1983. — С. 100.
  4. Кузнецова И. А. Французская живопись XVI — первой половины XIX века. Государственный музей изобразительных искусств имени А. С. Пушкина. — М.: Изобразительное искусство, 1992. — С. 261.