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 of his Sicilian works are individualistic. Van Dyck's portraits certainly flattered more than Velázquez's; when Sophia, later Electoress of Hanover, first met Queen Henrietta Maria, in exile in Holland in 1641, she wrote: "Van Dyck's handsome portraits had given me so fine an idea of the beauty of all English ladies, that I was surprised to find that the Queen, who looked so fine in painting, was a small woman raised up on her chair, with long skinny arms and teeth like defence works projecting from her mouth..." Some critics have blamed van Dyck for diverting a nascent, tougher English