Cupid and Psyche was made by the Italian Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova. This piece was commissioned by Prince Nicholas Youssoupov, it now is in the Metropolitan Museum and it was actually the second one he made about the iconic Greet mythology couple . The first was made for a Briton (which is just eighteenth century italian slang “British”) and it is located in the Louvre, in Paris. The second had more planning than the first one, but personally I think that making the second sculpture out of plaster was a terrible artistic choice if you compare the two, the first sculpture made out of marble looks pristine and it even feels more romantic in a sense. The plaster sculpture does not make it justice to the first one.
Neoclassicism was a movement that, just like the Renaissance, idealized beauty and tried to bring back the style that the Romans and Greeks had. It makes sense that Canova decided to sculpt Cupid and Psyche since the movement was about reviving how things were back then. The piece itself is more baroque than neoclassical because of the psychological impact it has in the person that sees it.
I think it is a lovely piece. Why? Well, what makes art lovely? It is lovely because it made me stop and look at it. It was the only sculpture in the middle of paintings and I supposed that it was arranged that way so that it would catch my eye, and it did because it felt real. It is not as detailed as it could be and it is ironic because during the renaissance, normal people were sculpted as gods, detailing every single tendon and hair and muscle, idealizing all the features; now, cupid, that’s supposed to be an actual god, looks like regular guy with wings. Cupid is holding Psyche by the head and with his arm around her chest, she is reaching out to him and barely touching his head. It is not the most common way to kiss someone and if I didn’t know their story it would lead me to believe that Psyche is either dying or Cupid is leaving her.
Christina Ferando, who’s part of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Art in the Met, said that Antonio Canova was one of the most important sculptors of the Neoclassical movement, now I wasn’t there and I cannot assume that but he definitely had vision. The sculpture is heartbreaking, you don’t know how to feel when looking at this this this piece because there are so many emotions to choose from. Cupid and Psyche’s story goes like this, Aphrodite was mad at Psyche because she was so beautiful that the people of her island forgot to worship Aphrodite, so she sends her son, Cupid, to shoot Psyche with an arrow so she falls in love with the ugliest man of the island. When Cupid sees Psyche for the first time, he completely falls in love with her and ends shooting himself with the arrow. Psyche’s family is worried since she can’t find a husband, so she goes on a quest that the gods guaranteed will get her a spouse. She gets to a mountain where Cupid makes her a big mansion and during the first night she spends there she falls in love with him and they get married. Psyche never sees him during the day but this doesn’t bother her until her sisters, out of jealousy, convince her to look at him while he sleeps. When Cupid finds out about her betrayal, he leaves Psyche, because even though he loves her, love can not exist if there is no trust.
The story actually has a good ending (which is rare in Greek mythology), Psyche goes to Aphrodite to ask for her help to get Cupid back, and of course, she’s a Greek goddess, she’s mean and gives her impossible tasks that she’s only capable of completing because of animals helping her out of pity.In one the quests, she falls under a sleep spell, and that’s how Cupid finds her. He takes her to Zeus and asks him to give Psyche immortality, and he accepts(!) Now that she is a goddess, Aphrodite does not mind that Psyche dating her son and they live happily ever after (not really, Greek gods always have some tragedy going on). But it’s good for the couple. I think the sculpture is capturing the part of the story where Cupid leaves Psyche because of her not trusting him.
There have been several recreations of this piece, and when people think about Cupid and Psyche it is the first thing that comes to their minds. Canova was not doing any groundbreaking work, though, marble and plaster were not new materials being introduced to the arts and making art about Greek myths was not new either. anything that was knew by then plaster was not new awake this with marvel and plaster in this with materials the words already .This is a time where cameras did not exist yet or any other type of machine that could do the art instead of the artist. Canova’s impact cannot be compared to, let’s say, Picasso’s for example because he created a whole new movement that shook the art world to its core, defying the values that existed until then. Canova had no reason to challenge those principles because technology was not there to be a menace for artists, life needed to be represented since there was no other way for them to remember.
Artists were meant to do portraits of people that can afford them and as long as they follow the art principles they’re good. This is a time where they’re still trying to go back instead of moving forward because that’s what humans do. We repeat history over and over because we seem to never learn from our mistakes. Still, the piece is important and it should be preserved because it shows how humans and our emotions don’t change over time. Yes, the way we present them does but it is the same feeling. The art piece was made at the end of the 17th century and still, people go to a museum, today, look at it, and think “love.” Art has a way of exposing what we have in our subconscious to the world. An painter that wants to do a piece about love will probably do something related to the way they view love, how they have experienced it. For someone that grew up with trauma coming from their parents, they will present love as painful, while someone that was raised in a healthy way, will simply see love as joy.
I’m supposed to talk about the piece and its cultural influence and I already said 1 million times that I don’t think it is that important of a piece, culturally. It did not bring anything new and spectacular to the table. It’s true art would not be the same without it only because of all the copies based on it. Personally, I never get tired of seeing art pieces being made about love. Love never gets old in art, it has different shapes and sizes in and there’s been so many fights for it, so many revolts because people were not allowed to love who they wanted to. The world always has calamities going on, it doesn’t matter if it’s environmental catastrophes, political tensions that end in nuclear attacks. This planet is constantly going through something, suffering, starvation, or genocide. Art that represents human suffering it’s necessary to remind us of our mistakes so we don’t do them again, but if it came down to choosing, I would keep the artworks that remind us of love. It’s necessary for us to remember that there is hope. I think that’s another reason why we value art and try to preserve it no matter what, we want to remember that even with all the chaos in the world, there are small moment where love seems to win. If the world is a mess no matter the year or century and there’s no hope, there is no reason for us to live. Cupid and Psyche is about love and how, sometimes, only sometimes, it gets us a happy ending.