프시케

Bouguereau painted this Psyche in 1892, two years after the Paris art world split its annual Salon in two. A group of painters and sculptors had walked out in 1890 to found a rival society with its own exhibition, and Bouguereau stayed behind with the older Société des Artistes Français. Psyche herself comes from a Latin novel of the 2nd century, the Golden Ass of Apuleius, where she is a mortal girl whose beauty offends Venus and who is sent down to the underworld and back before she is allowed to keep Cupid. Bouguereau came back to her story several times in these years. This canvas has stayed in private hands ever since, and in the catalogue of his complete works it carries little more than a number, 1892/02.