“The Sleep of Endymion” is an oil painting created in 1791 in Rome by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson. The 24-year-old painter, a pupil of David, was already initiating the beginnings of the Romantic style and breaking away from the neo-classicism of his master. He shows the shepherd Endymion plunged into an eternal sleep. Selene, the goddess of the moon, has fallen in love with his beauty and sends Zephyr to spread the branches to caress him with her rays. Presented at the Salons of 1793 and 1814, the painting was bought by the State in 1818. The great Romantic authors such as Balzac, Baudelaire, and Chateaubriand praised its poetic strangeness.