Mercury Abducting Psyche
Adriaen de Vries (c. 1556-1626) · 1593
Mercury rises on the toes of one foot, wings at his ankles and on his cap, and carries the mortal girl Psyche upward toward Olympus, where she will be married to Cupid. Over two metres tall, the bronze group turns like a spiral: the god's body twists, Psyche's arm reaches back and up, and the two figures balance on the tiniest point of support. Walk around it. There is no single front, and every view shows a different silhouette, which was exactly the ambition of late Mannerist sculpture after Giambologna, in whose Florentine workshop Adriaen de Vries had trained.
The group was cast in Prague in 1593 for Emperor Rudolf the Second, one of the most passionate collectors of his age, and set up in the gardens of the Belvedere there in 1597. When Swedish troops sacked Prague in 1648 they carried it off to Stockholm, where it belonged to Queen Christina until her abdication in 1654. It was then shipped to Le Havre and given to the French diplomat Abel Servien for his estate at Meudon, and Colbert acquired it for his park at Sceaux in 1670. It came to the Louvre in 1876 and 1877.
Did You Know? Before reaching Paris, the bronze had already been imperial property in Prague, war booty in Sweden and garden ornament for Colbert at Sceaux.
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