1817
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Cupid and Psyche is a 1817 unspecified by Jacques-Louis David, a Neoclassicism work, depicting Clothed Male, Naked Female, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see two figures in a dark room. Cupid, a skinny teen with a smirk, floats above Psyche. His arrow dangles. Psyche lies asleep, her body twisted like a real person—not some perfect marble statue. David painted love as messy, not pretty. He read a rare Greek poem that described Cupid as awkward and proud. Most artists showed Cupid as a graceful boy. Here, he’s all elbows and grin. David’s bold choice makes this odd. Compare it to his early work *The Oath of the Horatii*. Find it in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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. David took inspiration from a number of ancient texts, including an obscure, recently published Greek poem by Moschus that describes Cupid as a mean-spirited brat with flashing eyes and curly hair.
Jacques-Louis David included two butterflies in this painting: one above the slumbering Psyche and the other on the base of the couple's bed frame.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jacques-Louis David was born in Paris on 30 August 1748 into a bourgeois family; his father died in a duel when the boy was nine, and a maternal uncle guided his education.
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