Psyche in the Temple of Love

What you are looking at

A young woman stands half-turned in a marble interior, looking down at a sprig of honeysuckle she holds by its stem. A small white butterfly has settled on one of the leaves, and the flowers, cream and pale yellow, droop at the end of the stem. Her chestnut hair is bound in an orange-red turban; a loose rose-colored robe slips from her shoulders, and her left arm folds across her body. Her expression is quiet and absorbed, the faint smile the old description of her as amused tries to capture.

Behind her, the setting does a lot of work. To the left rises a column of veined pink and amber marble, painted with the care of a geologist. To the right, beyond an opening, are arcades, a fountain basin and white doves, the birds of Venus. The palette is warm and narrow: apricot, rose, honey and stone, with the white butterfly as the coolest note in the picture.

How it was painted

Edward John Poynter (1836–1919) trained in Paris under Charles Gleyre and became one of the pillars of the Victorian art establishment: first Slade Professor at University College London, director of the National Gallery and, from 1896, President of the Royal Academy. His manner is precise and finished, with tight drawing and smoothly blended flesh. The meticulous marble shows his taste for archaeological detail, which he shared with Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

What does the painting mean?

The story of Cupid and Psyche comes from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, written in the 2nd century AD. Psyche, a mortal so beautiful that she provokes the jealousy of Venus, is carried off to a palace where an unseen lover, Cupid, visits her only by night. Here she seems to wait in that palace, or in a temple of the goddess.

The butterfly is the key. In Greek, psyche means both the soul and the butterfly, and ancient art often gave Psyche butterfly wings. Poynter turns the symbol into an incident: the soul looks at its own emblem without knowing it. Honeysuckle, which twines around other plants, was a Victorian emblem of devoted love, and the doves place the scene under Venus.

The picture belongs to the Aesthetic taste of the 1880s for single, inward-looking female figures, beauty for its own sake rather than drama.

Where to see it

The painting is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, part of National Museums Liverpool. For the myth in sculpture, see Canova's Cupid and Psyche and Pietro Tenerani's Psyche in a Faint; for a parallel Victorian heroine, see Starlight and our collection of famous paintings of women.