❤️Image sources: Cleveland Museum of Art, wikipedia.org, Rijksmuseum

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00:00 Cupid and Psyche, 1817
Oil on canvas, 184.2 x 241.6 cm
Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748-1825)

David used the story of Cupid and Psyche to explore the conflict between idealized love and physical reality. Cupid, lover of the beautiful mortal Psyche, visited her nightly on the condition that she not know his identity. Cupid was usually depicted as an ideal adolescent, but here David presents him as an ungainly teenager smirking at his sexual conquest.
*Image source: Cleveland Museum of Art

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03:07 Cupid and Psyche, 1798
oil on canvas, 186 cm x 132 cm
François Gérard (1770–1837)
*Image source: wikipedia.org

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05:46 The Toilet of Psyche, 1823
oil on canvas, h 277cm × w 362cm × t 4cm
Joseph Paelinck(1781–1839)
*Image source: Rijksmuseum

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07:55 Cupid and Psyche, 1767
oil on canvas
55 cm x 71 cm
Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée (1725–1805)
*Image source: wikipedia.org



💘[The Great Love Story of Cupid and Psyche]
Once upon a time there was a king with three daughters. They were all beautiful, but by far the most beautiful was the youngest, Psyche. She was so beautiful that people began to neglect the worship of Venus (Aphrodite), the goddess of love and beauty. Venus was very jealous, and asked her son Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with a horrible monster. When he saw how beautiful she was, Cupid dropped the arrow meant for her and pricked himself, and fell in love with her.

Despite her great beauty no-one wanted to marry Psyche. Her parents consulted an oracle, and were told that she was destined to marry a monster, and they were to take her to the top of a mountain and leave her there. The west wind took her and wafted her away to a palace, where she was waited on by invisible servants. When night came her new husband visited her, and told her that he would always visit her by night and she must never try to see him.

Although her invisible husband was kind and gentle with her, and the invisible servants attended to her every desire, Psyche grew homesick. She persuaded her husband to allow her sisters to visit her. When they saw how she lived they became very jealous and talked Psyche into peeking at her husband, saying that he was a monster who was fattening her up to be eaten and that her only chance of safety was to kill him. Psyche took a lamp and a knife, but when she saw her beautiful husband, Cupid, she was so surprised she dripped some hot wax onto his shoulder, waking him. He took in the situation at a glance and immediately left Psyche and the magnificent palace she had been living in disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Psyche roamed about looking for her husband, and eventually in desperation approached his mother, Venus. Still angry, the goddess set various tasks for Psyche.The first was to take a pile of wheat, barley, millet, vetches, beans, and lentils and separate them by evening. In despair, Psyche was unable to start dividing the grains. An ant took pity in her and called over its fellow ants and separated the pile for Psyche and then disappeared before Venus returned.

he next morning, Venus demanded that Psyche cross a river and collect the golden wool of the sheep grazing there. When she reached the riverside, the river god warned Psyche not to tempt a flood and beware of the rams that destroy mortals. Instead, he advised Psyche to cross at midday, when the waters were calm and the sheep took shelter in the shade and pick the wool off of the bushes and trees.
For the next task, Venus handed Psyche a box and instructed her to travel to the underworld and collect beauty from Proserpine. Psyche decided to throw herself off a tower and let fate dictate her path through the underworld. But as she stood on the tower's top, a voice from the tower told her of a safer way to travel to Hades's realm. It also warned her to not open the box after collecting the beauty. After successfully navigating through the underworld and collecting the beauty, Psyche's curiousity got the best of her. As she opened the box, she was overcome by a deep sleep.

At last Cupid found out what was going on, he flew to where Psyche lay and gathered the sleep from her body and put it back into the box. He then persuaded Jupiter to order Venus to stop her persecution of Psyche. Then they were married and lived happily ever after - and it really was ever after since Psyche was made a goddess. In due time, Psyche gave birth to a daughter, Pleasure.

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