France: Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, Antonio Canova, 1787

Antonio Canova's statue Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, first commissioned in 1787, exemplifies the Neoclassical devotion to love and emotion. It represents the god Cupid in the height of love and tenderness, immediately after awakening the lifeless Psyche with a kiss, a scene excerpted from Lucius Apuleius' The Golden Ass. A masterpiece of its period, it appeals to the senses of sight and touch, yet simultaneously alludes to the Romantic interest in emotion co-existing with Neoclassicism.

Joachim Murat donated the first version (pictured) to the Louvre Museum in Paris, France in 1824; Prince Yusupov, a Russian nobleman who acquired the piece in Rome in 1796, gave a later version (created in 1796) to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The plaster cast for this later version is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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