Cupid and Psyche

The story comes from an old Roman novel by Apuleius, about Psyche and the god who loved her. He came to her only in the dark and forbade her ever to look at his face. Here she has broken that promise. She lifts a lamp to see the sleeping Cupid at last, and Crespi catches the instant just before it goes wrong, when a drop of hot oil will fall, wake him, and cost her years of wandering before she wins him back. He painted it around 1708 on a wide canvas close to seven feet across, and it entered the Medici collections in Florence, where the sleeping Cupid still lies caught in the light of the lamp that is about to give him away.