Selene and Endymion

An illusionistic painted ceiling in the King's Great Bedchamber at Hampton Court, pretending to open to the sky, reveals the myth of Selene, the Titan goddess of the Moon, and her love for the shepherd, Endymion, granted eternal youth by Zeus but placed in a state of eternal sleep. Endymion is shown in the arms of Morpheus, God of Dreams, with the latter's father Hypnos, God of Sleep, to one side. Selene is shown ascending from her nocturnal mystic rendezvous with Endymion in a cave, surrounded by some of their children. Eosphoros, the Morning Star, heralds the dawn, fast approaching from the east.

The central scene is framed within Antonio Verrio's usual mixture of gilded scrollwork, flying cherubs and flying creatures, surrounding four medallions showing scenes from the stories of Diana (who, as Roman Goddess of the Moon was frequently associated with Selene, despite the inappropriate potency of the Endymion myth to Diana's fabled chastity) and Actaeon, and Venus and Adonis.

Antonio Verrio decorated this and the adjacent bedchamber in the newly completed King's Apartments at Hampton Court for William III in 1701. Elsewhere at the palace, Verrio also completed the King's Staircase and the Little Banqueting House for the King, and finally the Queen's Drawing Room for William's successor, Queen Anne.

All of these decorative schemes are typically exuberant examples of baroque decorative painting, utilising quadratura and other illusionistic devices to create elaborate and highly coloured mythological fantasies, appropriate to their setting. Here, the sleepy myth of Selene and Endymion suits its location in William's Great Bedchamber.