Cupid and Psyche

Jean Baptiste Regnault · 1828

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

152.8 × 196 cm (60 1/8 × 77 1/8 in.); Framed: 173.4 × 215 × 8.9 cm (68 1/4 × 84 5/8 × 3 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

Regnault's *Cupid and Psyche* captures the ancient love story at its most tender — two figures suspended between myth and flesh, bathed in the luminous, controlled light that defines French Neoclassicism at its finest. Jean Baptiste Regnault occupies a curious place in art history: a contemporary and rival of Jacques-Louis David, he shared the era's devotion to classical subjects but pursued a warmer, more lyrical register. Where David could be severe, Regnault leaned into grace — his figures soft-edged, his compositions intimate rather than monumental. Trained in Rome and later a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, he brought a craftsman's discipline to subjects that could easily have tipped into sentimentality. The Cupid and Psyche myth, drawn from Apuleius's *The Golden Ass*, was among the most painted subjects of the Neoclassical period, with artists across Europe returning to it repeatedly as a study in both technical virtuosity and emotional restraint. This hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas follows Regnault's original in medium and method, preserving the subtle gradations of skin tone, the delicate rendering of wings, and the interplay of shadow that gives the composition its quiet sense of arrested motion.