Canova’s Eros & Psyche: A Neoclassical Masterpiece
Eros and Psyche by Antonio Canova
The Sculptor
Antonio Canova (1757-1822) was an Italian sculptor introduced to the art form at a young age. His true learning blossomed under Senator Falier’s patronage, earning renown for his marble statues. Canova’s style, initially rooted in the Venetian Baroque, evolved into Neoclassicism. He actively promoted the resurgence of ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics, influenced by the discovery of Hellenic art. While he didn’t see the Elgin Marbles until 1815, museums served as his primary inspiration. As a sculptor for the papacy, he received numerous commissions, including tombs for Popes Clement XIII and Clement XIV, and the statue of Perseus, solidifying his status as a leading Neoclassical artist. Even Napoleon commissioned works, notably the statue of his sister. Canova’s spirited sketch drawings contrast sharply with the perceived coldness of his marble statues. After Napoleon’s fall, he retrieved confiscated Italian art treasures from Paris and also undertook commissions in England. Canova died in 1822 and is buried in Possagno. His heart is preserved in the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, and his right hand at the Venice Academy.
The Sculpture
Date: Begun 1787, completed 1793
Material: Marble
Technique: Carved
Dimensions: 155 x 168 cm
Location: Louvre, Paris
Style: Neoclassical
Theme
The sculpture depicts the culmination of the myth of Eros (Cupid) and Psyche from Apuleius’s The Golden Ass. Cupid, son of Aphrodite, is portrayed as a winged boy with a round face, accompanied by his brother Anteros. Psyche, whose beauty rivaled Aphrodite’s, was targeted by Cupid but he fell in love instead. Aphrodite, enraged, tormented Psyche with trials. Cupid, defying his mother, married Psyche in secret. Psyche’s sisters, fueled by jealousy, convinced her to betray Cupid’s trust. Distraught, Cupid left, and Psyche embarked on a desperate search, ultimately serving Aphrodite. Cupid eventually reunited with Psyche, making her immortal.
Style and Composition
This Neoclassical work showcases Canova’s understanding of classical art, evident in its Greco-Roman composition. The form is clear, with a focus on the nude and delicate chiseling. The composition, inspired by a Herculaneum painting, depicts Eros awakening Psyche. The pyramidal structure creates upward momentum, while diagonals formed by Eros’s wings and Psyche’s body draw attention to their almost-kiss. Light enhances the volumes, contrasting with the curved lines and adding movement. The bodies are frozen in a moment of passion, a representation of love in its tenderness and desire. The converging lines of wings and legs create a central focus, emphasizing the union of the two figures. The spiral composition further enhances the sense of dreamlike freedom. The contrasting materials, light, and shadow contribute to the sculpture’s centripetal force. Marble, in its coldness, paradoxically conveys warmth and emotion.
Movement and Rhythm
Canova achieves extraordinary formal perfection in the treatment of the bodies, using diagonals to draw the viewer’s eye to the faces. Marble, despite its rigidity, becomes a medium for transmitting sensations and feelings.
Technique
: Carved
Dimensions: 155 x 168 cm.
Location: Louvre, Paris.
Style: Neoclassical.
TEMA
Representing the culmination of the legend of Eros (Cupid) and psyche as told The Golden Ass.
Cupid, son of Aphrodite, represented by the figure of a little boy, with white wings and a round face is in the company of his brother Anteros convertidse believed until a handsome man. But when they separated he went back to his childhood form and their antics. Psyche was baptized as a goddess of beauty, which angered Cupid Aphrodite command to kill her. Cupid when the rations was about to poison a ray of light lit up revealing the beauty and drove back Cupid. Meanwhile one of his arrows of love touched if skin causing a small wound. Aphrodite saw that his plan had failed and persecuted and tormented the girl. She wanted to end his life. Cupid called Zephyr to learn to pick up Psyche and sent to a distant island. The girl woke up in front of an enchanted palace. Cupid confessed his love and she agreed to marry him. Psyche’s sisters tried to change her mind and if it turns out to be a monster as they said would kill him with a dagger. At the end of his sisters died.
Psyche fulfilled the plan and when this lamp luminous Cupid discovered a handsome young man. Cupid awoke from sleep and walked exclaiming that there was no love if faith. Psyche left the palace scared and lost, cried and takes her own life. Pan and Ceres then advised him not to enter the service of Aphrodite, and Cupid would. Aphrodite wanted to prove his loyalty and strength and control to Hades to find a box containing ointment beauty, which only Persephone knew the recipe. Back, Psyche tried a little of that magic to try to erase the fatigue. The contents of the box was the spirit of sleep and was completely asleep. Cupid saw her and forced the spirit to return to his prison, Psyche awakened with a kiss of love. Cupid made her immortal and staying together forever. STYLE is a neoclassical sculpture. Canova is recreated in the knowledge of the classics, being a Greek and Roman composition. It has a perfectly clear in form, the taste for the nude and delicate chiselling of the surfaces. To say that in this type of work there is no aerial perspective.
Insita composition in a painting at Herculaneum. According to the author, this work represents the time comes to wake Eros Psyche of the deep, hellish dream in which he had been plunged after having opened the jar that had given Persephone, the goddess of Hell.
Academic style is attributed to compositionally through a pyramid that has a clear upward momentum and weightlessness get inserts a space and a vacuum that surrounds and penetrates the work.
They consist a group of two diagonals forming a cross defined by the wings of Eros and Psyche’s body will take an area that separates the two lips about to kiss. This focuses attention on the gesture of the faces and postures of the hands underline the passionate and erotic nature of the scene.
The light gives rigidity to the volumes, compensating with the curved lines of the interior obstacles, and provide more movement to work.
The bodies are fixed at the moment of passion that is about to reach its peak. It is a representation of love in all its glory and splendor, tenderness and lust.
It represents a very effective way all the love, the opportunity and desire, both heads are framed in the arms, creating a main focus. The converging lines of the wings and legs form an X that concentrates in the center of vision.
This action achieves compositional focus in this gesture of rapprochement of the faces, while the positions of the hands underline the passionate and erotic nature of the scene.
The composition also has a spiral shape by emphasizing the union of the two figures and the feeling of freedom of the dream, you can appreciate the gesture of Psyche.
The sculpture is a joint that causes a centripetal composition, contrast in materials and vacuum, between light and shadow. The marble is then the ideal material to represent the body heat and road and feeling.MOVEMENT AND RHYTHM
Canova’s sculpture is of extraordinary formal perfection in the treatment of bodies forced postures in efforts to compose a group dominated by two diagonals. This resource gets the focus in this approach geto of faces. The marble becomes the ideal material able to transmit sensations and feelings unthinkable. TECHNICAL
Canova in a modeler, ja that part of his creative activity is the implementation of the model in clay. The model has to be emptied immediately in plaster and then becomes the original work. Thanks to the finish and the system of the three measures. The finish of the marble is almost always the work of the artist. Canova attaches very great importance and reserve the meat, cloth and hair. Do not hesitate to add subtle changes in the modeling.
Most neoclassical works used white Carrara marble, without polychromy, because that was thought to be ancient sculptures.
Canova and buff wore away not only the work but trying to soften the natural matte surface of the marble and give the appearance of a more flexible material.
Canova wanted his sculptures prove almost cold and impersonal by not emotional fulfillment. In his latest works is taking an air Canova naturalist entered in the classical ideal. C AUSALIDAD
The work was commissioned by the English colonel John Campbell, but was eventually purchased by dealer and collector and Henry Hoppe Netherlands in 1800 and end by Napoleon’s marshal Joachim Murat. HISTORICAL CONTEXT
During the eighteenth century saw a number of social, economic policies and bring an end to the ancien regime.
The second half of the eighteenth century is considered the height of the break with tradition in all areas but excel in the political-social and religious. The Enlightenment ideal of a society based on reason ye the pursuit of happiness. It reacts against the imaginative excesses of Baroque and Rococo and censure them to serve the absolute monarchy of the Church and aristocracy.
Neoclassicism is the art most closely identified with the Enlightenment in the early decades of the nineteenth century Romanticism breaks.
Regarding the neoclassical sculpture, originated in Rome and its basic characteristics are to be found in the ideas of the Enlightenment.
The sculpture of this period rejects the pictorial effect of the Baroque and Toto leading role to the pure line, compositional clarity and the calm and sober set against the baroque convolutions.
Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen summarizes the various strands of neo-classical sculpture, but the Venetian classicism comes from a training set Baroque style of great simplicity rational.