Eros and Psyche. Roman Culture, I-II centuries A.D.

Eros and Psyche. Roman culture, I-II centuries A.D.
Marble.
Provenance: old private collection, Poitiers, France.
Conservation: torsos and lower parts of the figures are preserved in good condition, without restorations. They have lost the heads and part of the forearms. Psyche has lost the left arm.
Measurements: 73 cm. height.
Important sculptural group from the Roman period with the theme of love between Eros and Psyche. According to the classical canons inherited from Greece, the two bodies have turned and flexible thighs. They are adolescent, almost infantile bodies, with short, rounded limbs. Probably, their faces melted in a kiss. Their posture conveys great complicity in a candid and innocent way. Eros subtly brings his left knee forward and his body flexes in a Praxitelian curve. Psyche joins her body to that of her lover, with a delicate gesture but without languor. The drapery and the feet show great technical mastery.
The story of Eros and Psyche was narrated by Apuleius in his Metamorphosis (The Golden Ass): Psyche was the youngest and most beautiful of three sisters, daughters of a king of Anatolia. Aphrodite, jealous of her beauty, sent her son Cupid to shoot her with an arrow that would make her fall in love with the most horrible man she could find. However, Cupid fell in love with her and threw the arrow into the sea; when Psyche fell asleep, he flew her back to his palace. The myth of Psyche, heavily influenced by mystical religions, symbolizes the overcoming of trials and sufferings of the human soul to achieve immortality. In classical mythology, Cupid fell in love with the beautiful young woman and married her, keeping her identity a secret. She, on the advice of her sisters, tried to discover the secret, awakening the god, who fled. Enamored, she sought him out and, after passing a series of tests imposed by the mother of the God of Love, Venus, she was reunited with him.