Et le soleil s'endormit sur l'Adriatique (English: The sun fell asleep over the Adriatic) is an oil on canvas painted in 1910 by the tail of a donkey and attributed to the fictitious Italian painter Joachim-Raphaël Boronali.

This hoax, exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, was created by writer Roland Dorgelès to poke fun at modern painting.

[1] On March 8, 1910, Roland Dorgelès borrowed Lolo, the donkey, from Frédéric Gérard, known as “le père Frédé”, proprietor of the Lapin agile, a Montmartre cabaret.

[2] In Room 22 of the Salon des Indépendants in 1910, the public, critics and press discovered a work entitled Et le soleil s'endormit sur l'Adriatique, attributed to a young Italian painter no one had ever heard of: Joachim-Raphaël Boronali (“JR.

[Notes 1] The director of the newspaper L'Illustration receives a visit from Dorgelès, who declares that the painting Et le soleil s'endormit sur l'Adriatique is a hoax.

Dorgelès explains his motivation to “show the simpletons, the incompetents and the conceited who encumber a large part of the Salon des Indépendants that the work of a donkey, brushed with a tail, is not out of place among their works.”[5] Painter and sculptor André Maillos bought Boronali's painting for 20 louis (400 gold francs, equivalent to €3,500 in 2013).