Cupid and Psyche by Canova, also known as Eros and Psyche, is one of the most famous masterpieces by this extraordinary Neoclassical artist. This white marble sculpture was carved between 1787 and 1793, and it captures the moment when the two lovers are reunited after a long and painful separation.
I have had the chance to admire Cupid and Psyche at the Louvre in Paris many times, and every single time it fills me with such tenderness that I could stand there and look at it for hours. The pose of the lovers is studied down to the tiniest detail: they are frozen forever, one instant before their famous kiss.
Below I will tell you the story, the myth and a few curiosities about Cupid and Psyche by Canova. And I will also tell you exactly where to find it inside the largest museum in the world.
Ready to discover it all?
Let’s dive in.
Who was Antonio Canova
But who exactly was the man able to make marble breathe? Antonio Canova (1757 to 1822) was a boy from Possagno, a tiny village in the Veneto region of Italy, who became the true superstar of the art of his time. They called him “the new Phidias”, after the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece. Not bad for someone who started out carving stone in his grandfather’s workshop.
He had one obsession only: that his statues should never look like stone. And here, believe me, he pulled it off like never before.
The legend of Cupid and Psyche
The story that inspired this work is told in the Metamorphoses by Apuleius (also known as The Golden Ass), one of the most famous novels of the classical era (2nd century AD). Since it is a Latin text, the characters have Roman names: Venus (the Greek Aphrodite) and her son Cupid (the Greek Eros, for the Romans also called Amor).
It tells the story of Psyche, a young woman so beautiful that she stirred the envy of the goddess Venus. To punish her, the goddess sent her son Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest, coarsest man in the world. The young god, however, accidentally pricked himself with one of his magic arrows and fell hopelessly in love with the girl.
Overcome by passion, Cupid disobeyed his mother and brought Psyche to an enchanted palace, where he visited her every night, making her swear never to look at his face.
The girl, intrigued by the strange rule and egged on by her sisters, broke her oath and glimpsed her lover’s features by the light of an oil lamp. Cupid, realising he had been betrayed, abandoned the poor girl to utter despair.
Venus then put Psyche through many difficult trials before she could win him back. The last one was to descend to the underworld and ask Proserpina, wife of Pluto, for a little of her beauty. The goddess handed Psyche a flask filled with a sleeping potion, which plunged her into a deep slumber. When Cupid learned of the cruel trials his beloved had endured for him, he went down to the underworld and woke her with a kiss.
This is exactly the moment Canova chose to immortalise: the kiss between Cupid and Psyche, caught in the instant when they wrap around each other in an eternal embrace full of gentle passion.
A curiosity few people know: in Greek, psyche means soul. So the myth is not only a love story: it is the allegory of the human soul that, after a thousand trials and sorrows, is finally reunited with Love. That is why it still moves us today.
The moment of the kiss: what the sculpture shows
The first thing you will notice, when you stand in front of Cupid and Psyche by Canova, is that the artist captured Psyche’s awakening as if in a snapshot.
The kiss is so full of passion because it is the first time the two can look into each other’s eyes. The lovers overflow with love, tenderness and the joy of having found one another: the emotion, the sweetness and the longing come through in every gesture.
Cupid holds her by the waist and gently supports her head, while she leans back and embraces him.
Look closely: there is a balance here that puts you at ease, even if you cannot say why at first.
Try this. Stop and follow the lines: his outstretched leg, her bent knee, the intertwining arms, the rock on which the young woman lies. Cupid’s open wings and the legs of the two lovers draw a great X, and your eye always ends up right there, in the exact point where those lines cross: the kiss.
And that is not all!
The interweaving of the arms pushes you towards the two faces as well, closing them in a circle in which the beautiful Psyche frames the face of her Cupid. It is no accident: Canova calculated every line so that, wherever you turn, you always come back to that moment. This is where his lifelong pursuit of perfect beauty reaches its peak.
Canova’s two versions
Not many people know that more than one Cupid and Psyche exists, but only two were carved by Canova’s own hand. The first is kept at the Louvre in Paris, the second at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.
Who were they made for?
The first version was commissioned in 1787 by the Scottish colonel John Campbell. The work, however, never reached Scotland: it was bought by Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s brother in law, and taken to France. The second version was commissioned by the Russian prince Nikolai Yusupov, who had been sent to persuade the sculptor to move to the court of Saint Petersburg. Canova declined and stayed in Italy, but he agreed to carve a second version, which then set off for Russia.
Do not confuse these with the copies: those do exist, but they were made by the workshop and by Canova’s pupils. Adamo Tadolini, one of the best among them, was given permission by the master to carve several of them: a genuine mark of quality for the time.
The details that will surprise you
Canova’s Cupid and Psyche surprised me for two reasons above all.
The first is its size: in photos it looks huge and imposing, while in person it measures about 155 by 168 cm. The nice thing is that this lets you walk all the way around it and look at it from every angle: do it, because each point of view offers a new detail.
The second is that the marble looks alive: the flesh appears soft, not cold stone at all. The languid, slightly theatrical pose and the idealised beauty typical of Neoclassicism blend into the intense expressiveness of the faces.
The stone is beautifully polished, gleaming and pure white. Back then, artists deliberately played up the whiteness of their sculptures, because people believed the ancient Greek statues were white: to imitate them, they tried to make the marble as pale as possible.
But was that really the case?
No! Today we know that classical sculpture was, on the contrary, brightly coloured. I do not know about you, but picturing Cupid and Psyche covered in paint gives me quite a jolt. Lucky for us, Canova had no way of knowing that the ancient statues were full of colour pigments!
If you want to see another example of his skill but cannot make it all the way to Paris, I recommend visiting the Galleria Borghese in Rome: there you will find the wonderful Pauline Borghese portrayed as Venus. Trust me, the folds of the marble mattress look real.
Where to see Cupid and Psyche at the Louvre
Finding the work inside the Louvre is easier than you think, once you know where to go. Cupid and Psyche is on the ground floor of the Denon wing, in the great Michelangelo Gallery devoted to Italian sculpture: the same room also holds, among other things, the standing version of the same subject, in which Cupid and Psyche are shown on their feet.
The only real obstacle at the Louvre is the queue. It is the most visited museum in the world and, in high season, you can wait more than an hour just to get in. My advice is to book your skip-the-line ticket for the Louvre in advance: that way you skip the ticket queue and spend all your time on what really matters, the masterpieces.
If you are planning your visit, my article on how to skip the line at the Louvre has all the tricks (alternative entrances, quieter days and free admission).
The most romantic detail: Flaubert’s kiss
Cupid and Psyche made a deep impression on the intellectuals of its day. Some criticised it for being still too “Baroque”, while others praised it without reservation.
For a few, it even stirred overwhelming feelings. That was the case for the writer Gustave Flaubert, who confessed:
“I looked at nothing else in the whole gallery; I came back to it several times and, the last time, I kissed the swooning woman under the arm, the one who stretches her long marble arms out towards Love. And the foot! And the head! And the profile! Forgive me: after a long time it was my only sensual kiss; but it was something more than that, I was kissing beauty itself.”
A masterpiece capable of making one of the greatest writers of all time lose his head: if you ever pass through Paris, treat yourself to a few minutes in front of Cupid and Psyche too. Then, to plan your visit stress free, take a look at my guide on how to skip the line at the Louvre.
