Cupid and Psyche

Reynolds showed this at the Royal Academy in London in the summer of 1789, the same weeks the Bastille fell in Paris. He was president of the Academy, near the end of a long career and starting to lose his sight. The story comes from an ancient Roman novel by Apuleius, the moment the mortal Psyche lifts a lamp to see the mysterious lover who only ever came to her in the dark, and discovers he is Cupid, the god of love himself. Reynolds uses it mainly as an excuse to work with light pulling a body out of deep shadow. Oddly, he keeps the attention on Cupid, painted as a thin, ordinary boy rather than a beautiful god, asleep and about to be found out.