Amor und Psyche

Depiction of Cupid and Psyche in Austerlitz Castle Park. The sandstone figure from 1702 was created by Giovanni Giuliani. Cupid and Psyche is a very common subject in the fine arts of antiquity and modern times.

Psyche is the youngest and most beautiful of the three beautiful daughters of a king. She is so beautiful that everyone stops worshipping Venus, the goddess of beauty and love. Exasperated, Venus summons her faithful son Cupid and orders him to make Psyche fall in love with a bad man. As instructed by the oracle of the god Apollo, the father sends his daughter in a wedding dress to a lonely mountain top where she is to marry a terrible demon. But instead of becoming the demon’s wife, she is taken to a fairytale castle by Zephyr, the Lord of the Winds, on the instructions of Cupid, who himself has succumbed to Psyche’s supernatural beauty.