The Marriage of Cupid with Psyche

The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche was the first of three paintings by Batoni acquired over a period of years by Frederick the Great. There would have been more, but the artist failed to deliver a number of works ordered by the king. In the course of assembling his picture gallery, and before March of 1756, the king had this work commissioned directly from Batoni in Rome by Field Marshal Jakob Keith. Quite some time, the king disliked the contemporary Italian painters. Frederick seems to have heard about Batoni – then the most celebrated painter in Rome – for the first time in 1751 from Count Francesco Algarotti. Batoni was then recommended to him by his sister Wilhelmine, the Margravine of Bayreuth, who had stayed in Rome in 1755, and had reported to her brother about Mengs and Batoni in a letter dated 23 May 1755: “Batoni too is a great painter, and not terribly expensive; he is far above Pesne.” Before the outbreak of the Seven Year’s War, the King commissioned the present painting from Batoni, along with two pendants bei Mengs, and a picture by Placido Costanzi that was intended to serve as a companion piece to Batoni’s picture. The war made it impossible for Mengs – a Saxon who was in the service of the King of Poland – to complete and deliver the works he had begun for Frederick. Batoni did however send his picture, completed in 1756, while Costanzi’s Apollo and Daphne arrived as well in 1757. During the Prussian occupation of Saxony, Frederick had Batoni’s painting sent to the first wintering quarters (1756/57) in Dresden. The King is said to have carried it with him throughout the war. It was paid for by the gallery inspector Matthias Oesterreich only after the peace agreement of 1763. It then entered the now finished picture gallery as the only work by a living artist, while Costanzi’s work, regarded as unsuitable as a pendant, went to the Neues Palais. At that time, the King attempted to recruit Batoni as court painter. Batoni could however not decide to accept this invitation. At the same time, Frederick ordered three large-format works based on Greek and Roman legends or myths from Batoni, only one of which was completed, and moreover only in 1775. It entered the Neues Palais. In an inventory dated 1805, Batoni’s picture of 1756 is described as follows: “Venus gives her assent to the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, which is effected by Hymen, while Zephyr delivers a cooling blast.” Seated on the left in a splendid chariot drawn by a pair of doves is Venus, who enjoins her son to place the ring on Psyche’s finger. Hymen, the god of marriage, holds Psyche’s hand, its ring finger extended. Venus’s chariot and the two gods stand on cloudbanks, while the mortal Psyche in contrast is supported by the floor of the bridal chamber. According to Puhlmann’s description, “Psyche’s head is a likeness of Signora Lucie, Batoni’s wife, who was the greatest beauty in Rome in her youth alongside the wife of the painter Mengs”. With its far smaller than life-sized figures, its rich, balanced composition, which revolves around a central, artfully interlocking triadic group, the brilliant colours, subtle modelling, and the gracious elegance of the figures, this is one of the principal works of this artist. Here, he takes up the classical tradition of Carlo Maratta, who in turn invoked Annibale Carracci and Raphael. Batoni’s elegant classicism represents the immediate antecedent of the Neoclassicism of Gavin Hamilton and of Mengs, whose ceiling painting Parnassus in the Villa Albani, which dates from 1760, just four years after Batoni’s picture, inaugurated the new style. Erich Schleier | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019