The Wedding of Cupid and Psyche1587
The gods of Olympus crowd a banquet among the clouds to celebrate the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, the mortal who won immortality through love. More about this work
About this work
The gods of Olympus crowd a banquet among the clouds to celebrate the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, the mortal who won immortality through love. Hendrick Goltzius engraved the vast composition in 1587 after a design by Bartholomeus Spranger, court painter to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, printing it from three plates on sheets joined into one. The twisting, elongated bodies and swelling lines are hallmarks of Haarlem Mannerism, and the print carried Spranger’s inventions far beyond the imperial court.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
A work made of engraving on three joined sheets of ivory laid paper.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Engraving
- Lines cut directly into a metal plate with a steel burin, which makes them swell and taper. It took years to master, and for centuries it was how paintings travelled as pictures.
- Laid paper
- Handmade on a mould of close-set wires, which leave fine parallel lines you can see when the sheet is held to the light.
Hendrick Goltzius
Dutch, 1558–1617 · Born in Mühlbracht; died in Haarlem.
Goltzius was the outstanding Dutch engraver of his generation, despite a childhood injury that crippled his right hand. In Haarlem he joined Karel van Mander and Cornelis van Haarlem in promoting the muscular Mannerist style of Bartholomeus Spranger, engraving swelling, tapering lines of great virtuosity. A journey to Italy in 1590–91 turned him towards classical sculpture, as in his engravings of the Apollo Belvedere, and around 1600 he gave up engraving for painting.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Dutch Golden Age
Seventeenth-century painting from the Dutch Republic: still lifes, interiors, portraits and flat, wide skies.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 2023.1261
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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