“Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss”
This marble sculpture from 1787 is by the Venetian Italian Neoclassical sculptor, Antonio Canova, and is titled “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss”. This is a supreme example of the Neoclassical art movement that began with the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. It is considered Canova’s masterpiece.
Interestingly, this statue was not meant to be looked at from any one angle and was actually built to revolve. This garnered it some criticism as critics thought that the viewer would have to circle around the entire statue to understand it without any one clear perspective. Others thought it was too erotic. This did not impact Canova’s career, however, as the public and the political powers loved his work, and he remained incredibly popular in his day. Both Napoleon Bonaparte and Catherine II sought Canova for their own purposes, though Canova believed and repeatedly said that “art was above politics.”
In “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss”, Canova is depicting a moment from Lucius Apuleius’s, The Golden Ass, from the 2nd century AD in which the god, Cupid, revives lifeless Psyche with a kiss. The story goes like this:
Psyche is a princess who is so beautiful, that people start to treat her as a goddess, going so far as sacrificing things to her. Venus, the goddess of love, gets quite jealous of Psyche’s beauty, so she asks her son, Cupid, to made Psyche fall in love with some ugly mortal. However, before Cupid is able to shoot his fateful arrow, he accidentally scratches himself and falls in love with Psyche instead.
Meanwhile, Psyche remains so beautiful, that suitors are afraid to ask for her hand. Her parents get distressed and ask the god Apollo for help. Apollo tells Psyche’s parents to get her ready as if to be sacrificed, and after they leave her on a cliff, Psyche is transported to a wood where she spends her time with an invisible suitor who only visits her at night and who she is not allowed to look upon. After some time, and with some curiosity, Psyche looks at her lover and sees that it is Cupid, who immediately leaves her to go back to the realm of the gods.
Distressed, Psyche tries to get Venus to help her get Cupid back. Venus then sends Psyche on a series of tasks. One task was that Psyche had to go to the underworld (Hades) to bring back a flask of divine beauty. Psyche was instructed by Venus not to look into the flask, but curiosity got the better of her and Psyche ended up peeking in order to obtain a bit of that divine beauty for herself.
However, instead of holding beauty, the flask contained the “sleep of the innermost darkness”. Once the flask was opened, the fumes of this innermost darkness immediately penetrated Psyche which made her fall unconscious and into a death-like deep sleep. Cupid comes to her rescue and awakens her with a kiss, which is the scene depicted here. After Psyche successfully completes Venus’s tasks, she is allowed to marry Cupid and is made into a goddess herself.
The original “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” statue is currently on display at the Louvre in Paris, France. However, several copies were made through a cast of the original and are currently on display at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, United States. All incredible museums.
For more on Antonio Canova, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
