# The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [PERINO DEL VAGA]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Fresco ## Commentary Between 1542 and 1548 Pope Paul III transformed a series of rooms on the two upper levels of the Castel Sant'Angelo into a comfortable and at the same time impressive apartment. Time and again this castle had provided protection to popes against the incursions of secular powers, and it continued to have a military function. His predecessors had commissioned various decorations, although these have been lost. The newly decorated rooms were to provide leisure and spiritual rest - the typical purpose of a country house or villa. The mythological subjects with which some of the rooms were painted - such as the overtly erotic depictions of the story of Cupid and Psyche in the frieze of the bedchamber - thus correspond to what one would expect in a villa, but hardly in papal apartments. ## Related artworks - [Adoration of the Child]() - [Alexander the Great Battles the Indian King Porus]() - [Ceiling decoration]() - [General view]() - [Hope, Venus, and the Martyrdom of St Paul]() - [Jupiter Handing a Newborn Boy to Diana]() - [Lamentation]() - [North Façade of the Villa Doria]() - [Shipwreck of Aeneas]() - [Sketch for St John the Baptist Preaching]() - [Sketch for the Feast of Herod]() - [Sketch for The Visitation]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()