Cupid-and-psyche

Caravaggio’s "Amor Vincit Omnia" or “Love Conquers All” shows a life-size Cupid, completely nude, set against a deep, almost black background. He’s not a sweet idealized cherub but a wiry adolescent boy with tousled hair, dark eagle wings and a crooked, knowing grin.

The painting "Cupid and Psyche" by Jacopo Zucchi represents decisive moment when Psyche, driven by curiosity and peer pressure, decides to learn the identity of the mysterious lover, Cupid, who visits her every day at sunset without showing his face.

The statue "Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss" by Antonio Canova is a marble group made between 1787 and 1793, now in the Louvre. It shows the moment when Psyche is brought back to life by Cupid. She has just awakened and twists upward from a rocky base, arms raised to encircle Cupid’s head. He kneels over her to give her a kiss.

Rubens’s Saturn shows the powerful old god in a swirling, dramatic sky clutching his child and tearing flesh from his chest, turning a violent myth into a tense moment of fear, power, and tragic inevitability.

François Gérard’s Cupid and Psyche shows the lovers as idealized, porcelain-smooth bodies with Cupid leaning in a tender embrace to give a kiss to Psyche who is turned towards the viewer, not seeing Cupid.

François Édouard Picot’s Amor and Psyche shows the lovers as idealized, porcelain-smooth bodies with Cupid leaning in a tender embrace to give a kiss to Psyche who is turned towards the viewer, not seeing Cupid.