Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss

Canova began this marble in Rome in 1787 for a British collector, Colonel John Campbell, and was still carving it when the French Revolution broke out. He finished it around 1793, yet it was never delivered to the colonel. A Dutch buyer acquired it next and left it in the sculptor's studio.

The man who finally took it away belonged to the new France. Joachim Murat, one of Napoleon's generals and his brother-in-law, was showing it by 1801 in his château at Villiers, just outside Paris. In 1808, the year he became King of Naples, Murat ceded it to Napoleon in exchange for income from his new kingdom, and in March 1809 it entered the Louvre.

Near Psyche's feet you can still see the metal handle that once let the group be turned on its base, so it could be studied from every side.