The poet Homer called Aurora “rosy fingered.” Here Fragonard painted the goddess of the dawn literally sprinkling rose petals from the morning sky onto the sleeping figure of Night, in a scene whose gracious sensuality embodies the 18th-century French Rococo style. The composition’s horizontal format and raking perspective (we seem to look up at the figures from below) indicate that it originally served as an over-door decoration, most likely in a Parisian townhouse. The canvas once had a different shape, voluptuously curved to fit surrounding boiseries (wood moldings)—look closely and you can see the original scalloped edge and the canvas inserts added to square the corners in the 19th century, when the painting was transformed into an independent gallery picture.

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