Psyche1.0047_Zucchi

Psyche1.0047_Zucchi

Wikimedia
ogcma s.v. "Psyche"
Classical Sources:

Jacopo Zucchi, ca. 1541-1589/90, "Cupid and Psyche" (sleeping Cupid watched by Psyche), oil on canvas, 1589, Rome, Galleria Borghese, inv. 10.

Zucchi has taken care to include all the details of Psyche's nighttime open-eyed encounter with Cupid — the lamp, the knife in hand, the erotic energy. Psyche is certainly given the superior position by the artist. Compare this to J.-L. David's brash, commandeering Cupid (Psyche1.0234).

Jacques Lacan took particular interest in the Zucchi Psyche writing that "the soul only becomes animated at the moment when it loses the desire that has fulfilled it.... [and] he makes much of the placing of the vase of flowers." (H. Morales Classical Mythology, 21.

Venus and Cupid by Jacopo Zucchi, Venus holding a lamp over a reclining Cupid on a bed

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.