JACOPO ZUCCHI

AMOR AND PSYCHE

 

This painting depicts goddess ‘Psyche’ and her husband, Amor. It some greek traditions to is said to have been a secret relationship, where when finally revealed family members of Psyche grew envious towards and became jealous of her lifestyle – when they started to meddle between both characters. The initial story behind this painting is that Psyche’s sisters developed jealousy towards her relationship and told Psyche that her husband must be a snake and that he had been lying throughout their marriage. The goddess then dismissed her trust for her husband and whilst he was sleeping in the dark, she held a lit candle over him to study whether he was truthfully human or snake. The candle light dripped over him, waking him to her standing over him. This made him angry and he abruptly left. For days, Psyche searched for Amor in distress and knew that she had to find him to prove her love. However, she could never see him, only hearing his voice chanting ‘love cannot live without trust’.

The story continues further surrounding their relationship and is a very common myth within greek history. Psyche is supposedly meant to also be an allegory subject, meaning the actual mind or soul of your body; not your actual brain. So, the goddess could actually be invisible or imaginary – only standing for someones worship towards truthful thoughts or spiritual actions. Not only is the story interesting to me, but how Zucchi has portrayed such a bright painting in a supposedly candle lit room. I feel that this could be a really effective link in recreating the painting into my work as candle lighting can create a really romantic mood in photography and overall, highlight this theme of love. lust, possibly even their betrayal too. My outcome could end up with a more gothic approach to renaissance art due to its particular aesthetic shown here and can give my work a different dimension, something completely different to my previous shoot – in regard to colour, lighting and actual theme.

Additionally, playing around with this idea of ‘love cannot live without trust’ in text format could be effective in linking both pieces of work. This could filter through a more modern approach as it could seem quite gothic and dark; but making it more fashionable in the sense of how Gucci uses text or subtitles in their campaigns now. There are clearly many objects or props painted too which should be symbolic of something relating to the story and i should look into this. I already know from previous research, white flowers typically are meant to signify nostalgia or a sense of longing for the past. Either these specifically or the theme of nostalgia could be worked on in addition to my other motives as i feel it is a stronger surrounding idea i can take from the painting to develop on through my styling.

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