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Psyche, Archaeological Museum of Naples, Italy
Psyche, Amphitheatre, Capua
Sculpture – Marble (Height 87 cm) Late 1st century BC – Early 1st century
Psyche This elegant female statue, now fragmented and with clean lines, could be found in a museum of modern art, yet it once depicted the beautiful Psyche in the Roman amphitheatre at Capua.
Her head tilted to one side gives her that dreamy air of an inner life; psyche is a Greek word meaning ‘soul’.
The love story of Eros and Psyche appears in Books IV and VI of Apuleius’s “The Golden Ass”.
Psyche was the most beautiful of a king’s three daughters, she was so beautiful that she was honoured as an incarnation of the goddess of beauty, Venus, who became jealous of this mortal whom no one dared to ask for her hand.
Venus ordered her son Eros (Love) to make her fall in love with the most despicable of men.
For his part, the king consulted the oracle of Apollo, who advised him to place Psyche on a rock on the mountain so that a monster might seize her.
No monster came; the wind Zephyr carried the young girl into the valley, where she fell asleep.
She awoke in a magnificent palace where she received nightly visits from a stranger whose face she could never see.
Psyche When her sisters visited her in that marvellous palace, they felt jealous and advised her to arrange for a lamp so she could see the face of her lover, who might be the monster foretold by Apollo’s oracle.
Psyche was moved to discover the beauty of Eros by the light of the lamp, but unfortunately she spilled a drop of burning oil onto the shoulder of her handsome lover, who awoke and fled at once.
So Psyche began her quest for lost love, a difficult quest marked by trials imposed by Venus, who did not hesitate to send her to ask for a fragment of her beauty from the Queen of the Underworld, Proserpina.
Psyche had been given a box which she was absolutely not to open, but once again she could not resist her curiosity and the hope of finding within it the divine beauty that would please her lover; alas, it was sleep that was locked inside the box and which immediately plunged her into a deep slumber.
She awoke thanks to the intervention of Eros, who put Sleep back in his box and asked Jupiter to grant immortality to his beloved.
Psyche (Soul) became immortal after drinking the cup of ambrosia offered by Jupiter to celebrate her marriage to Eros (Love), and gave birth to Voluptas.
Mythology Achilles | Aesculapius | Amazons | Aphrodite Venus | Apollo | Artemis | Athena Minerva | Atlas | Concordia | Danaids | Diomedes | Dionysus | Dirce | Flora | Ganymede | Hera Juno | Hercules | Hermes | Nike | Orestes | Psyche | River | Satyrs | Zeus
Sculptures Mythology | Persons | Animals | Bas-relief
Artworks Sculptures | Frescoes | Eroticism
MANN Artworks | Schedule Tickets | Location | Authorizations
Museums Borbonica | MANN | Catacombs | Capodimonte | Royal | Jago | Neapolis | Diocesano | Martino | C.Elmo | Zevallos | Floridiana | Filangeri | C.Nuovo | Aquarium | Natural H. | Archivio | Pignatelli | Madre
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