Sleeping nymph and shepherd by Angelika Kaufman

Painting by the Swiss artist Angelika Kaufman “Sleeping Nymph and the Shepherd”. The size of the painting is 46 x 52 cm, copper, oil. A mythological theme dedicated to the story of a meeting of an Arcadian shepherd with a sleeping nymph.

The inhabitants of Arcadia, mainly lived in cattle breeding and agriculture, did not know industry, arts and sciences, enjoyed the glory of a hospitable and pious people among the rest of the Greeks, so the newest poets, especially the idyllic creators, like the Italian Sanazaro and his imitators, portrayed Arcadia as a country of paradisiacal innocence, patriarchal simplicity of morals and peaceful happiness, making it a theater of his poetic inventions. Arcadian shepherds, glorified with fantastic decorations, became the subject of a special kind of poetry and painting – pastoral.