Kneeling Psyche
Unknown · Roman imperial period
A young woman in a thin chiton sinks to one knee, her arms raised in supplication. The wings on her back mark her as Psyche, the soul, whose love for Eros was tested by the goddess Aphrodite, and the pose has been read as the moment she begs forgiveness. The wings, however, are not ancient: they were carved, together with the arms and the left foot, by the Roman sculptor Cosimo Fancelli in the seventeenth century, when the statue was restored for the Borghese family. The drapery over the chest, belly and left leg was reworked at the same time.
What the sculptor of the Roman imperial period made, probably in Carrara marble, was a kneeling girl; what the Baroque restorer made was Psyche. The statue was found in Italy and stood in the Villa Borghese in Rome until 1807, when Napoleon bought the collection and brought it to Paris. The kneeling, crouching pose belongs to a Hellenistic taste for figures that turn on themselves, and the thin cloth clinging to the thighs shows off the body beneath. Look closely at the joins: the head, the right hip and the right leg have all been reattached.
Did You Know? Her wings, the very things that make her Psyche, were added by a seventeenth century restorer; the ancient figure had none.
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