0949NOTPsyche_Dufour

0949NOTPsyche_Dufour

Dufour panoramic FULL
Apuleius Golden Ass 4-6 Latin

Joseph Dufour, panoramic wallpaper series entitled "Le Histoire de Psyché et Cupidon," 1816, produced in Paris but hung in many European and American homes.

Here Psyche offers the fountain of youth to Venus.

The earliest account of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is postclassical, in Apuleius' Golden Ass 4-6 (click above). As early as Plato's Phaedrus, Psyche seems to be coming into a personified being. The fully developed myth proved to be extraordinarily influential in subsequent ages, especially popular among medieval allegorists who made Psyche's journey into that of the soul (psyche) on earth, through travails toward a union with the Divine (eros, true desire) after life. Apuleius' account already has the full seeds of that allegorical explanation.

Neoclassical etching depicts Venus and the Graces with Cupid, doves, and a ritual offering in a grand architectural setting

Dufour had done other classically themed large-scale decors: Les Métamorphoses d'Ovide, Les Voyages d'Anthénor, Didon et Énée, and his "undisputed masterpiece" L'Histoire de Psyché et Cupidon (1816) as well as several neo-classical landscape panoramics.

Frowned upon by the British, French scenics were consumed in great quantities by Americans in the 19th Ct.

C. Thibaut-Pomerantz, Wallpaper: a history of style and trends (Paris: Flammarion, 2009), esp. 84-131.

C. Lynn, Wallpaper in America from the Seventeenth Century to World War I (New York 1980), esp. 201-206.

C. Lynn Frangiamore, Wallpapers in Historic Preservation (Washington1977).

O. Nouvel-Kammerer, French Scenic Wallpaper, 1795 - 1865 (Paris: Flammarion 2000), esp .

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.