The myth of Cupid & Psyche is one of forbidden love. Cupid arranges to be secretly married to Psyche without her knowing his identity and every night they sleep together, but Cupid leaves before sunrise keeping his persona hidden. Psyche, convinced by her family to find out the identity of her husband, sneaks out of bed at night and holds an oil lamp above her sleeping husband. Expecting to see a hideous creature she is shocked to witness a beautiful god. In her ecstasy of surprise and passion, a drop of oil falls onto Cupid and wakes him. He flees the house, and both are punished by the gods as Psyche is left alone to wander the world searching for her husband. After a while, Cupid makes a case for his love to Zeus and Psyche is granted permission to join the gods as one of them, thus Cupid and Psyche can be married as equals. The present sculpture illustrates the final part of the myth, showing Cupid and Psyche in an open and public embrace.

The date of conception, 1884, also ties in with the period in which Rodin’s relationship with Camille Claudel was blossoming and it has been suggested that perhaps the images of tenderly embracing lovers carried some autobiographical significance for the sculptor. Rodin himself cited the composer Beethoven as an influence, telling Jeanne Russell much later that ‘it was whilst listening to it for the first time (Beethoven’s Second Symphony) that I pictured Eternal Spring, just as I have modelled it since.’ (Normand-Romain, 2007, p.335)

Whatever provided the exact genesis for the two lovers, Eternal Spring went on to become an icon of romantic love and one of Rodin’s most well-known and certainly most commercially successful models. The work was originally conceived with the male figure’s left arm suspended freely to his left-hand side. Very few bronzes of this composition were cast, as by 1898, Rodin had entered into a contract with the Barbedienne foundry to produce an unlimited commercial edition of the model. The Barbedienne version, which became infinitely more popular than the earlier variant, was cast from a plaster taken from a marble carved in 1898. This variant (of which the present work is an example) incorporates a rocky support under the man’s outstretched arm.