Beschreibung:

AFTER THE ANTIQUE- A LARGE AND RARE WHITE MARBLE FIGURAL GROUP OF CUPID AND PSYCHE
ROMAN, 18TH CENTURY
On a Breccia Africana and white marble column, the column being ancient Roman
group 136cm high, 232cm high overall
This intimate marble group of Cupid and Psyche embracing is after the Roman model excavated on the Aventine Hill in 1749, and which was gifted by Pope Benedict XIV to the Capitoline Museum in the following year. Its subject has traditionally been identified as Cupid and Psyche, a theme that had long been familiar to artists and antiquarians from ancient reliefs, sarcophagi, intaglios, and free-standing statues, such as the one discovered at Santo Stefano Rotondo in 1666, in the possession of the Medici Grand Dukes since the late 17th century.
As Haskell and Penny note in Taste and the Antique, it was the Capitoline statue's "sentiment that most appealed to both travellers and scholars - 'the first burst of youthful loveliness', the 'innocent fondness', the 'virginal' and ingenuous gesture of Psyche" (p. 190). The story of the young lovers, which originates in the 2nd century A.D. novel Metamorphoses by Apuleius, tells of how Venus' divine son Cupid fell in love with the mortal princess Psyche, and the obstacles she had to overcome to be reunited with him.
In the 18th century, the composition was popularised by small scale reproductions in bronze, such as those by the Zoffoli workshop in Rome, and other media, such as Wedgwood intaglio and Sèvres porcelain. The present marble, which matches in material and size the Capitoline original and stands on a beautifully striated marble column, speaks of a more ambitious commission, either from an Italian patron or a Grand Tourist, intended for a stately palazzo or townhouse, or a grand country residence.
Literature:
F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, the Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900, London, 1981, pp. 189-191.