L’enlèvement de Psyché [The Abduction of Psyche]

The original painting of L’enlèvement de Psyché by French artist Pierre Paul Prud'hon was shown ar the 1808 Paris Salon and today belongs to the collection of Museé du Louvre. This copy by Pereira da Silva was made during one of his trips to France, during the time that his daughter, painter Helena Pereira da Silva, was staying in Paris on a study grant from the state government. L’enlèvement de Psyché arrived in the collection of the Pinacoteca do Estado in 1914, accompanied by a copy of Adoração dos pastores [The Adoration of the Shepherds, by Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera (1519-1652) and by the painting Durante a pose, by Oscar Pereira da Silva himself.

The theme of this work refers to a passage of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, narrated by the Roman writer Apuleius in the second century and reworked in the 17th century by French poet Joean de La Fontaine, in Les amours de Pstché et de Cupidon [The Loves of Cupid and Psyche] Psyche was a princess so strikingly beautiful that she roused the jealously of Venus, the goddess of love. Out of spite, Venus asked her son Cupid, the god of erotic love, to shoot her with an arrow so that upon awakening she would fall madly in love with a monster. But Cupid also fell in love with the girl and decided to protect her from his mother's anger. The two lovers underwent a series of challenges and hardships until Psyche became immortal and the two finally managed to live as a couple in the dwelling place of the gods.