Psyché abandonnée

By the summer of 1794 Jacques-Louis David was the most powerful artist in France and a deputy who had voted to send the king to the guillotine. Then his ally Robespierre fell, and David spent much of the next year in prison, expecting he might follow. He painted this there, or just after. Psyche sits naked on the ground the morning after her first night with Cupid, who has flown off and left her, staring out with the face of someone abandoned. There are no heroes here and none of the Roman virtue David had built his career on. He meant it as the painting that would carry him back into the public Salon once he was released.