Psyche in the 1700s
Carl Jung, in Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
(To read the myth of Eros and Psyche click here; to read Jean Shinoda Bolen’s interpretation of it, click here)
Jean-Honore Fragonard
1753
Oil on canvas, 168 x 192 cm
National Gallery, London
Pompeo Batoni
1756
Oil on canvas, 183 x 118 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Francoise Gerard
1798
Oil on canvas, 186 x 132 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Why did Cupid go from being a full-grown god in the 1500s representations to being a mere boy in the Enlightenment? Was he diminished by the age of reason? Did he become merely cute as Western society began to value rationality?
Ask his mother?
……………
More seriously though, interesting question. Over-rationality can do strange things to people/cultures. And of course, this culture puts the diminished cutsy Eros on Valentine’s cards….