- Title
- Cupid and Psyche
- Date Made
- 1574
- Medium
- Engraving
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 15 3/4 × 10 7/8 in. (40.01 × 27.62 cm)
Image: 14 3/8 × 9 1/4 in. (36.51 × 23.5 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.88.91.29
- Collecting Area
- Prints and Drawings
- Curatorial Notes
In this scene from the ancient Roman writer Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, Venus’s son Cupid and his bride, the beauty Psyche, are crowned with laurels by a hora as they celebrate their nuptials atop a sumptuous couch, accompanied by their child Voluptas and the goddesses Juno and Ceres. Beyond them, satyrs prepare a goat for sacrifice. The composition mirrors the fresco decoration of the Sala di Psyche, a luxurious banqueting room in the Palazzo Te, a palace designed by Giulio Romano for Federico II Gonzaga, the duke of Mantua, beginning in the 1520s. Subtle differences between the print and the fresco, such as the angle of the furniture on which the couple recline, suggest that prolific engraver Giorgio Ghisi based this work not on the fresco itself but rather on an early preparatory drawing by Giulio, now presumed lost.
Claire Spadafora Baes
2024
