Cupid and Psyche

Cupid and Psyche is a very common subject of fine arts of antiquity and of modern times and a popular subject of fiction and music. Shown are aspects of the mythical love affair between the God Cupid, also called Cupid and the mortal princess Psyche, which will eventually be included among the immortals. The modern artistic treatment of the substance linked directly or indirectly to the story of Cupid and Psyche, which is inserted in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius from the 2nd century. In the visual arts of the ancient world, the representation of Cupid ( Eros ) and Psyche was already in the era of Hellenism, long before the time of Apuleius, popular.

Story in Apuleius

In the eleven- books work Metamorphoses, the story takes a broad space: It makes the end of the fourth book, the whole fifth book and most of the sixth book of ( 4.28 to 6.24 ). The story of Cupid and Psyche is not from the Greek original of the Metamorphoses; apparently it is a creation of Apuleius. Nestled she is in the representation of the girl's Charite fate that has been kidnapped by a gang of robbers. The old housekeeper of the robbers told Charite, to distract them from their suffering, the story of the god Cupid and Psyche, the king 's daughter, whose name is the Greek word for "soul" is.

Psyche is the youngest and most beautiful of the three beautiful daughters of a king. She is so beautiful that all stop, Venus, to venerate the goddess of beauty and love. Angry calls her faithful son Cupid Venus and orders him to bring Psyche to fall in love with a poor man. The father sends his daughter - as the oracles of Apollo commanded him - in a wedding dress on a lonely mountain top, on which it is to marry a terrible demon. But instead of the demon she is of Zephyr, the Lord of the winds, brought at the direction of Cupid, who succumbs even the unearthly beauty of Psyche, in a fairy-tale castle. In this castle her husband seeks her night after night on, but during the day he disappears without them ever get to see him face. Since psyche feels lonely, he granted her a visit from her sisters. Amor warns however, they should not be misled by them figure out who he was. The sisters first happy to find the psyche safe and sound are quickly consumed by envy. On another visit, they succeed in the naive girl to convince her that she had married a snake that would devour her because of her terrible form never to transgress in daylight and the pregnant woman. Fearing for her unborn child and to herself she followed the advice of her sisters and waiting that night with an oil lamp and a knife on her husband.

When she lit her lover, she sees not a monster, but the beautiful body of the winged Cupid. Psyche - overwhelmed by love for her Divine Spouse - does not notice, like a drop of hot oil falls on Cupid's shoulders. The God who has been disobedient to his mother, feels betrayed, flies away, leaving Psyche back inconsolable.

Venus, full of anger that her son has ignored their commands and instead has fathered a child with Psyche, sets out to search for the girl. Psyche has several life-threatening tasks for the goddess done. Thanks to the help of ants, speaking reeds or towers, she manages to solve them. In the last task but it can be by the desire to reclaim her lover, overwhelm. So she opens the box that contained a beauty cream of Persephone, wife of Pluto. She wears the ointment, which was actually intended for Venus, and falls into a death-like sleep.

Amor, who has now recovered from its combustion, their rushes to the rescue. Because he loves psyche still, he shoos her sleep with his wings back into the box back. While Psyche delivers the box, Cupid flying to Jupiter and obtains permission to marry Psyche. The supreme God indulgence, psyche presents a beaker with ambrosia and thus makes them immortal, so that a wedding among the gods, nothing more stands in the way.

Psyche bears Cupid a beautiful daughter, who is named Voluptas ( lust ).

Artistic representations

The story of Cupid and Psyche has diverse continued to work in literature and music, but especially in the visual arts. Many paintings and sculptures deal with the couple. The most popular are the sculptures by Antonio Canova and Auguste Rodin in the Louvre and the Hermitage and the group of sculptures by Reinhold Bega in the Old National Gallery in Berlin, as well as the etchings of Max Klinger. The painter Moritz von Schwind adorned in the manor in Saxon Rüdigsdorf ( Kohren- Sahlis ) the shrinkage of the owner pavilion with numerous frescoes. In music, among other things, César Franck, a three-part symphonic poem for chorus and orchestra Psyché wrote, Richard Franck likewise a tone poem for large orchestra love idyll "Cupid and Psyche" (op. 40). CS Lewis with Till we have Faces ( You are yourself the answer ) given a modern interpretation of this story.

For the narrative research Cupid and Psyche is the oldest written set version of the fairy tale type animal groom.

In the novel Perfume by Patrick Süskind, as well as in the film version of a perfume plays an important role named Cupid and Psyche.

Even the Paris Cameo tiara, once allegedly Gift Napoleon Bonaparte to his first wife, Empress Josephine and now part of the Swedish Kronschatzes, decorated with a depiction of Cupid and Psyche.

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