The chariot of Aurora, goddess of the dawn, ascends into the sky to begin a new day. Sunflowers turn toward the light, while a bat flees with the darkness. A winged boy, or putto, awakens Aurora’s brother, the sun god Helios.
The broad brushstrokes and small scale of this canvas suggest that it was made as a sketch for a larger painting. Its subject matter would have been perfectly appropriate for the ceiling of a bedroom in an opulent eighteenth-century home.
For forty years at the beginning of the 20th century, the painting was hidden away in storage because its buyer deemed it too provicative for public display.
