Cabanel’s scene illustrates a pivotal moment of the final task, when Venus demands that Psyche travel to the Underworld. Venus devises a complex series of trials in response, intending to destroy the couple. Cupid approaches Psyche in her sleep and is so overcome by her beauty that he accidentally scratches himself with his golden arrow, falling deeply in love with the human girl. In myth, Psyche, a young mortal woman of exceptional beauty, drives the powerful goddess of love, Venus, into a jealous rage, and she commands her son Cupid to make Psyche fall eternally in love with a monster.
She carries a small box, or pyxis, which she has taken to the Underworld in order to collect the beauty of Proserpina. The tale of Cupid and Psyche greatly appealed to audiences for its obvious themes of love, beauty, jealousy and perseverance with the ultimate conclusion that love conquers all. Psyche is shown here with an elaborate pair of butterfly wings, as her name in Greek literally means "soul" or "butterfly," and she has come to represent transformation and the human spirit's ability to emerge from darkness.
In Psyché, as in La naissance de Vénus and Echo (1874, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Cabanel has isolated a mythological figure in an evocative landscape. Because of this renown, Cabanel was frequently elected to the Salon jury, and as a professor at the École he taught many of the period’s most celebrated artists, including Jules Bastien-Lepage, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Henri Le Sidaner and Aristide Maillol. Entering the École des Beaux-Arts at the age of seventeen, Alexandre Cabanel achieved early success and became one of the most influential Academic artists of the nineteenth century, along with William Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme. After winning the Prix de Rome in 1845, he exhibited regularly at the Salon and his 1863 submission, La naissance de Vénus (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, a study for which sold in these rooms, February 1, 2019, for $175,000), brought him international fame and success and has since become an icon of nineteenth century painting.
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