Psyche1.0234

Psyche1.0234_David

Cleveland Museum of Art site
ogcma s.v. "Psyche"

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), “Cupid and Psyche,” 1817, Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1962.37

The self-satisfied teenager who has established a controlling relationship with his partner seems to boast in the viewer's face. The relationship will not always be so comfortable for him as soon he will be burned by his lover. (See Jacopo Zucchi's take on the reversal of roles in Psyche1.0047.

Neoclassical painting of Cupid and Psyche in bed, with Cupid smiling and Psyche sleeping, dark background with mountains

ML p. 214:
“...This work has always been controversial and, at the least, disturbing. The focus is on Cupid, while Psyche sleeps …, her symbol, a butterfly, hovering above. Cupid’s expression is that of a satiated conqueror, an amoral exploiter of the young woman for whom trials and labors lie ahead before she can achieve eternal union with her lover. The landscape … alone gives hope for Psyche’s liberation from her oppressive lover. This psychological interpretation of myth was achieved nearly a century before Freud: it confounded David’s contemporaries and still discomforts viewers.”

A very late painting by David (1748–1825), who also painted “Psyche Abandoned” in 1788, in the Marquis du Lau collection, Paris.

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, 1400 – 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.