The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Antonio Canova · Amore e Psiche giacente; Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l’Amour · a group of two figures and their rocky base, in white marble, in the round, a little under life size, made to be walked round · commissioned in Rome in 1787 and finished in 1793 · in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, since the 1820s · scored as the first marble, the object as it stands; the second marble of the same composition, the full size plaster at Possagno, the sketches and the later copies and reductions are context and are not scored
Mode
A pierced marble group of two figures in the round, an instant held; the cool surface and calm contour of the Neoclassical ideal given to an intimate subject
Mythos
Psyche and Cupid from Apuleius: the soul raised from a deathlike sleep by love, the divine stooping to the mortal
Phase
Commissioned in Rome in 1787 and finished in 1793; in the Louvre since the 1820s
Presentation
White marble, a little under life size, two figures on a rocky base, open on every side and made to be walked round
Register
Beauty, warm, lyrical and still: tenderness shown as suspension
Scale
Two figures, one moment, one rock
Governing Proposition
A winged boy kneels over a girl who has fallen into a deathlike sleep on a rock, and she wakes with her arms already raised and joined round his head; their faces are a hand’s breadth apart. Canova took the fable from Apuleius and changed one thing, a kiss in place of an arrow, and then did not give the kiss. The wager of the group is that the instant before arrival can be held in marble from every side at once, so that a soul’s return to life is shown as an approach the eye, walking round it, never sees completed.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Antonio Canova’s group was commissioned in Rome in 1787 and finished in 1793. It is carved from white marble: two figures and their rocky base, a little under life size, made to be walked round. A winged boy kneels on one knee behind and above a girl who half reclines on a rock. Her torso twists up and back, and her two arms are raised and joined round his head. He bends over her, one hand under her head, the other at her breast, and his two wings rise open. Their faces are a hand’s breadth apart. The kiss of the title is not given.
The subject is from Apuleius, the Metamorphoses, the book also called The Golden Ass, books 4 to 6. Psyche, sent to the underworld for a box of Proserpina’s beauty, opens it and falls into a deathlike sleep; Cupid comes down and wakes her. In Apuleius he wakes her with a harmless prick of his arrow. Canova put a kiss in place of the arrow, and then withheld it. That is the sculptor’s one change to his source, and the whole group is arranged round it, round an arrival that does not happen.
The work scored here is the first marble, the one in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, where it has been since the 1820s. A second marble of the same composition, the full size plaster in the Gipsoteca at Possagno, the terracotta and plaster sketches and the many later copies and reductions are context and are not scored. The page judges one object, as made, on its own rock: two bodies, a pair of wings, a small vessel and the stone they rest on.
Movement II
The structure is two crossing diagonals. His body and his rising wings make one; their two reclining bodies make the other. Where they cross are the faces, and round the faces her arms make a ring. The gap between the faces is the centre of everything: the crossing, the ring and the space between two mouths obey a single idea, approach without arrival. A small vessel lies at the rock beside her, the box of Proserpina given as a vase, naming the cause of the sleep and so the story.
The geometry carries the fable. She lies on the rock, which is earth, sleep and the underworld she has come back from; he comes down on wings, the divine stooping; the waking happens in the upward reach of her arms to him. A descending line meets a rising one, and the moment of revival is put in their meeting. Her lower body is still heavy, still asleep; her arms are already taut, already awake; the waking moves upward through her. Little is idle. Take away the wings and the crossing loses an arm; take away the arms and the ring is gone; close the gap and there is only a kiss, an event done.
What the group discloses is the waking of the soul by love, held at the instant of return. That meaning is old: Apuleius gave it, and the Neoplatonic tradition read the fable so. Canova renders it with perfect fitness and does not uncover it anew, and the archetype takes its depth more from the fable than from anything the marble finds. What is his is a perception: that tenderness can be shown as suspension, the touch withheld by a hand’s breadth, and that desire made decorous by its pause is still desire. It is real and particular, and it is nearer a rendered condition than a stated truth.
Movement III
The carving is of the highest command. The wings are cut thin and wide at a span that carries risk at every stroke, and in light they read as plumage. Psyche’s arms are raised free of the mass and joined at the hands. The gap between the faces is cut clean in a block where one slip would have closed or broken it. A pierced group of two figures, open on every side and balanced on a low base, is a feat of engineering as much as of sculpture.
The surfaces are graded by what they represent. The rock is rasped, rough and heavy; the drapery is crisper; the flesh is finished to a soft polish that takes light as skin does; the wings, which are divine and in the air, are carved thinnest of all. One law runs from the stone to the feathers, finish by meaning, and it is the same law that runs up through Psyche’s body from her sleeping hips to her waking hands. The two most distant things in the group, the rock and the wings, obey it alike.
Canova worked by the method of his medium: a full size plaster, pointing, assistants to rough out the block, and his own last finishing of the surface. The quality that sets this marble apart, the finish and the free parts, lives in that last stage, and the work is judged as made, as an altarpiece is judged without charge for its workshop. The routine passages are the rock and the drapery at her hips, plain beside the figures. The range the law governs is narrow, two figures, one moment, one tone; within it there is no contradiction, and only the vessel speaks in another, emblematic register.
Movement IV
In painting this scene would be one view and one instant. In the round the instant is held while the viewer moves, and the near kiss is near from every side and resolved from none. From the front the group is a ring of arms round two faces. From the side the crossing opens like a pair of compasses, the wings at full span. From behind it is one sweep, the long line of his back and leg and the turn of her torso up to him. The form distributes the meaning round the object, which the fable in words cannot do.
The elevation is beauty, sustained rather than single. The eye returns from every side to the meeting of the faces, and the wings lift the whole off its stone. The register is warm, lyrical and still. There is no terror in it; the deathlike sleep of the myth is present only in the weight of her lower body against the lifted upper one, and the group does not rise to the dread the highest works carry. It keeps preferred views, too, and from some angles the knot of limbs reads as arrangement rather than knowledge.
The inheritance was the Roman Baroque of Bernini and his heirs, marble driven to violent motion, and the antique lovers group, the Capitoline Cupid and Psyche, standing and embracing. Canova turned to a reclining, open, pierced pair in a held instant, with the cool surface and calm contour that Winckelmann’s taste asked for and an intimacy the antique groups lack. A two figure marble so open to the air, its forms crossing rather than massed, was unusual, and in its time it was read as both too sweet and too daring. Yet the Neoclassical turn was a programme of the period, with Winckelmann, Mengs and the Roman academies behind it, and the group is a leading instance of that turn rather than its single cause.
Movement V
The marble is whole as a composition: both figures, the wings and the vessel are present, about 233 years after it was finished, and it has been in the Louvre since the 1820s and in view throughout. Canova was the most famous sculptor of Europe for a generation, and this group, with the Three Graces and the Paolina Borghese, is among the works by which his manner was known. It was copied and reduced widely, and it stands behind a long line of nineteenth century academic lovers groups and Psyche groups. Then his reputation fell for most of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was recovered. The object stayed whole and seen through the eclipse; for a long time it was little examined again.
The readings it has borne converge. It has been taken as a Neoclassical ideal, as a frank erotic image, as an instance of the theory of the ideal, and later as a study of the viewer’s movement round an object; each turn of the walk yields something, and the meaning is open at first sight. The decisive turns of later sculpture, Rodin’s and then modernism’s, went against Canova’s surface and ideal rather than through them, though Rodin’s lovers groups answer the type. The orders the group holds are the erotic and the tender, sleep and waking, death and return, a mortal soul and a god. It cannot hold labour, the state, history or society, and the low figure for what it encompasses describes two figures on a rock, not a failing.
The desk sets it 0.8 under Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa at 8.9, the inheritance Canova turned from, a whole made space against a single group inside a programme; under Michelangelo’s Pietà at 8.9, the other marble of two figures with one lying; and under David’s The Death of Marat at 8.9, the Neoclassical summit of the same decade, which disclosed a political condition where this renders a myth with grace. It stands 0.2 under Klimt’s The Kiss and Rodin’s The Thinker at 8.3, a tenth under Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque at 8.2, and above Fragonard’s The Swing at 7.8, the gallant intrigue of its century. The group stays as Canova left it: a girl waking on a rock, a god bent over her, and between their faces a hand’s breadth that no side of the walk will close.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test on two figures and a rock. Take away the wings and the crossing loses one of its arms: the group is the meeting of his rising wings with their two reclining bodies, and the wings alone lift it off the stone. Take away her raised arms and the ring that holds the two faces is gone. Close the gap between the faces and the work becomes a kiss, an event done, rather than the instant before revival. The small vessel by the rock could almost go, but it names the cause of the sleep and so the story. The scale is right, a little under life. What gives is the rock and the drapery, which could be otherwise and lose almost nothing.
Score: 8.4 / 10
What the group brings into the open is the waking of the soul by love, held at the instant of return: her arms already answering before her eyes are fully open, his care in the hand under her head. That is a meaning, stated wholly in the image. But it is the meaning Apuleius and the Neoplatonic reading of the fable had already given, and the marble discloses it with grace rather than uncovering it anew. What is newer is a perception: that tenderness can be shown as suspension, the touch withheld by a hand’s breadth, and that desire made decorous by its pause is still desire. It is real and particular, and nearer a rendered condition than a truth about human life.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Elevation here is beauty, sustained rather than single, and it rises from every main view: from the front, the ring of arms round the two faces; from the side, the crossing opening like a pair of compasses with the wings at full span; from behind, the long line of his back and leg and the turn of her torso up to him. The height lives in the near meeting of the faces, to which the eye returns from every side, and in the wings, cut thin enough to read as feather and air. The register is warm, lyrical and still. There is no terror; the deathlike sleep is present only in her heavy lower body, and the group does not reach the dread the highest works carry.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The myth is built, not evoked. The fable of Psyche and Eros is the soul raised from death by love, and the structure carries it: she lies on the rock, which is earth, sleep and the underworld she has come from; he descends on wings, the divine stooping; the waking happens in the upward reach of her arms to him. The crossing is the meeting of a descending and a rising line, and the moment of revival is put in the geometry. Held below the gate because the group fits a known text and a known allegory perfectly rather than enlarging them: two young bodies take their depth from the fable more than from anything the marble finds. The vessel is emblem, evoked.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The inheritance is the Roman Baroque of Bernini and his heirs, marble driven to violent motion, and the lovers group of the antique, the Capitoline Cupid and Psyche, standing and embracing. Canova turned to a reclining, open, pierced group in a held instant, with the cool surface and calm contour that Winckelmann’s taste asked for and an intimacy the antique groups do not have. A two figure marble so open in the air, its forms crossing rather than massed, was unusual, and the stakes were technical and critical: it was read in its time as both too sweet and too daring. But the Neoclassical turn was a programme of the period, with Winckelmann, Mengs and the Roman academies behind it, and this is a leading instance of it rather than its cause.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Change the form and the work stops knowing its subject. In painting the scene would be one view and one instant; in the round the instant is held while the viewer moves, and the near kiss is near from every side and resolved from none. The crossing reads as descent and rise from the side, as an enclosing ring from the front, as one sweep of back and limb from behind: the form distributes the meaning round the object, which the fable in words cannot do. The polish of the flesh against the rougher rock is the difference between the living and the stone she lay on. Held below the top because the group keeps preferred views, and from some angles the knot of limbs reads as arrangement rather than knowledge.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The evidence of return is long and real. The group has been looked at, copied, drawn and written about for more than two centuries, and read as a Neoclassical ideal, as a frank erotic image, as an instance of the theory of the ideal, and later as a study of the viewer’s movement round an object. Each turn of the walk round it yields something. But the readings converge: the meaning is open at first sight, and repeated looking deepens pleasure and formal understanding more than meaning. Canova’s reputation fell for most of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was recovered, which shows the work survived a change of taste unexhausted, and also that for a long time it was little examined again.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The field is European sculpture of the 1780s and 1790s and the century after. The intrinsic force is strong: this is one of the works that defined what a Neoclassical marble of love could be, a reorganisation of the lovers group from massed embrace to open, crossing, suspended form. The reach is named and particular within the tradition and thinner beyond it, because the decisive turns of later sculpture went against Canova’s surface and ideal rather than through them. Fame and reproduction are presence and earn nothing here. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the most famous sculptor of Europe for a generation, this group among the works by which his manner was known, copied and reduced widely, behind a long line of nineteenth century academic lovers groups and Psyche groups, and answered by Rodin’s lovers.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. Form: whole as a composition, both figures, the wings and the vessel present, about 233 years after the marble was finished. Its fragile parts, the wing tips, the fingers and the pierced zones, are exactly those a marble loses, and the record of its repairs is not known well enough to credit more than the usual figure. Presence: continuous and wide, in the Louvre since the 1820s and in view throughout. Its esteem fell sharply in the age that disdained Canova and rose again, and the object stayed whole and seen through the eclipse. Fabric: marble, stable. Just past two centuries, the form whole, the widest presence for that span.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Command of carving at the highest level, and load bearing. The wings are cut thin and wide in marble at a span that carries risk at every stroke, and they read as plumage in the light. Psyche’s arms are raised free of the mass and joined in a ring at the hands. The gap between the faces is cut clean in a block where one slip would close or break it. The flesh is finished to a soft polish that takes light as skin does, against the rasped rock and the crisper drapery, so that the surfaces are graded by what they represent. A pierced two figure group balanced on a low base, open on every side, is engineering as well as sculpture. Below the very top because the rock and the drapery at her hips are routine beside the figures.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Take the two most distant elements, the hard rough rock and the near weightless wings. One law governs both, finish by meaning: what is earth and sleep is rough and heavy, what is living flesh is polished, what is divine and in the air is carved thin. Take her slack lower body, still asleep, and her taut lifted arms, already awake: one law again, the waking moving upward through her. The crossing, the ring and the gap obey a single idea, approach without arrival. Held because the range is narrow, two figures, one moment, one tone, and narrowness is not counted as coherence. Within it there is no contradiction; only the vessel belongs to another, emblematic register.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The orders held: the erotic and the tender, sleep and waking, death and return, the human and the divine in a mortal soul and a god, the sacred in its mythic form. They are held in one structure, not listed, and the passage from death to life is the most serious of them. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what two figures on a rock cannot hold: labour, the state, history, society, the family except as the myth’s unseen background of a jealous goddess, the natural order beyond the stone. The mark describes the form rather than charging the work. It holds a little more than an intrigue of the garden, because death and return are in its one action, and far less than a picture that holds a court.
Score: 6.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.1 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.2, then The Made at 9.1, then The Inner Law at 8.6, with The Inevitable and The Living Form at 8.4. A marble whole as a composition for about 233 years and in view in the Louvre since the 1820s; carving of the highest command, the wings cut thin as air, the arms free, the gap between the faces clean, the surfaces graded from rasped rock to polished flesh; one law, finish by meaning, from the stone to the feathers; nothing idle; and an instant held while the viewer walks round it.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.3: two figures hold love, sleep and waking, death and return, a soul and a god, and nothing of labour, the state, history or society. Below the rest of the twelve, The Unconcealment at 7.5 and The Swerve at 7.6: a known meaning given new form, and a leading instance of a period’s programme rather than its cause. Then The Bottomless Well at 7.8: a return that deepens pleasure more than meaning. The four are one fact: a perfect rendering of a fable whose sense was already given.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.4, The Made at 9.1, The Inner Law at 8.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 9.2 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Archetypal Deep at 8.0, Pressure on Tradition at 8.0, The Swerve at 7.6 and The Unconcealment at 7.5 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is met at its edge: no axis it governs falls below The Unconcealment at 7.5, exactly the threshold. The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.3. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 97.2, an average of 8.10 that displays 8.1, in Tier IV, a tenth above the 8.0 at which it begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the object, from photographs and from the documented history; known better as an image and a composition than as a condition record. The work scored is the first marble of the composition, commissioned in Rome in 1787 and finished in 1793, in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, since the 1820s: one object, two figures and their rocky base in white marble, made to be walked round, judged as it stands. The second marble of the same composition, the full size plaster in the Gipsoteca at Possagno, the terracotta and plaster sketches and the later copies and reductions are context and are not scored. Canova’s method, a full size plaster, pointing and assistants for the roughing out, with his own finishing of the surface, was the ordinary practice of the medium, and the work is credited and charged as made. The subject is from Apuleius, Metamorphoses, books 4 to 6. The group carries no words, and nothing is quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the group’s exact dimensions, the name of its first patron and of its later owners, the year it entered the Louvre, whether it was mounted on a turning base, the extent of any old breaks and repairs to the wing tips and fingers, the share of assistants in the carving, the history of its original surface finish, the patron and present place of the second marble, and an anecdote of a nineteenth century writer and a copy of the group.