Cupid and Psyche (van Dyck) Cupid and Psyche (van Dyck) Cupid and Psyche is a 1638–40 painting by Anthony van Dyck. It is now in the Royal Collection and shown in Kensington Palace. Psyche may be modelled on van Dyck's mistress Margaret Lemon. One of the last in his oeuvre, it shows a marked influence of Titian and dates from his time as a court artist to Charles I of England. It is his sole surviving mythological painting from that period and possibly comes from a series of paintings on the Cupid and Psyche theme ordered for the Queen's House at Greenwich - other artists
Anthony van Dyck portrait tradition—of painters such as William Dobson, Robert Walker and Isaac Fuller—into what certainly became elegant blandness in the hands of many of van Dyck's successors, like Lely or Kneller. The conventional view has always been more favourable: "When Van Dyck came hither he brought Face-Painting to us; ever since which time ... England has excel'd all the World in that great Branch of the Art’ (Jonathan Richardson: "An Essay on the Theory of Painting", 1715, 41). Thomas Gainsborough is reported to have said on his deathbed "We are all going to heaven, and Van Dyck is of the Company."