HOW TO TELL THE STORY OF CUPID AND PSYCHE: FROM FULGENTIUS TO GALEOTTO DEL CORRETTO

JULIA HAIG GAISSER

A story changes with each retelling. Details of the plot may be altered or added or omitted altogether. The narrator may be an omniscient third person or one of the characters. The story may be free-standing or imbedded in another narrative; it may appear in different genres; and its action may begin or end at different points. It is inevitably coloured by the perspective and purposes of the narrator and audience, whether these are internal to the narrative or external or both. Sometimes, factors like these affect the story only in subtle ways. Sometimes, however, they make it a different story. In what follows I will explore the ways in which this universal truth about storytelling is manifested in the reception of Apuleius’ tale of Cupid and Psyche, from its earliest retelling by Fulgentius the Mythographer around 550, through that of Giovanni Boccaccio some 800 years later, to its flowering in the courts of Ferrara and Mantua in the period around 1470–1500. These retellings use and revise not only Apuleius but also each other, for the reception of an ancient author is like a snowball rolling down a hill, constantly picking up (and shedding) elements of earlier readings as it goes.

Fulgentius and Boccaccio are both allegorists.¹ Each follows the same procedure, first telling Psyche’s story and then allegorizing it; both allegories are religious and explicitly identify Psyche as Soul.² I will touch on their allegories as needed, but my principal interest is in the stories themselves. The stories are essentially different both from each other and from the one told by Apuleius.

Fulgentius tells the story of Cupid and Psyche in Mitologiae 3.6 (Fabula deae Psicae et Cupidinis).³ His narrative is characterized by significant omissions. He leaves out every detail connected with Psyche’s redemption and final happiness: her pregnancy and the birth of Voluptas, her rescue by Cupid from Stygian sleep, her award of immortality, and her joyous marriage in heaven.⁴ He also omits any reference to Fortune, so important in Apuleius, and, in a series of editorializing intrusions in the narrative, he makes it clear that the fault is entirely Psyche’s. She is thrice guilty. She is guilty of disobedience: ‘her affection for her blood kin overshadowed her husband’s command’.⁵ She is guilty of curiosity and credulity: ‘she seized curiosity, stepmother of her safety, and she seized easy credulity, which is always the mother of deception’.⁶ Worst of all, she is guilty of carnal lust: raising the fatal lamp, she recognizes Cupido—surely both the god and the force of erotic desire—and ‘is on fire with the licentious passion of love’.⁷ Cupid deserts her, and she is an exile, driven from her home.⁸ All this, it should be noted, is in the narrative—not in the allegory. In the allegory, Fulgentius likens her to Adam, who, ‘although he sees, does not see that he is naked until he eats of the tree of concupiscence’.⁹ He evokes Adam again at the end of the allegory, saying that Psyche—‘as if made naked by desire’—loses everything and is driven from her palace.¹⁰

Boccaccio knew Fulgentius but revised his account, perhaps polemically.¹¹ He tells the story in Genealogia Deorum Gentilium 5.22, in a chapter entitled De Psyce XV^a Apollinis filia.¹² This is his first change in the story. In Apuleius, Psyche’s parents are the unnamed king and queen of fairytale, allegorized by Fulgentius as god and matter. But Boccaccio follows Martianus Capella, who made them Apollo and Endelichia.¹³ This detail is important, for in the allegory Boccaccio explains that Psyche’s father Apollo, the sun, is God, ‘the true light of the world’; her husband is ‘divine stock, that is, honourable love, or God himself’.¹⁴ She is forbidden to see him because he is to be known by faith alone.

Two versions of the Genealogia have come down to us: the autograph and the vulgate which supersedes it.¹⁵ They tell subtly but significantly different stories. In the autograph, Boccaccio’s narrative follows Apuleius very closely, except for the detail of Psyche’s parentage, but there are some important changes in the vulgate. There, like Fulgentius, Boccaccio omits Psyche’s pregnancy, her wedding in heaven, and her gift of immortality, but, unlike Fulgentius, he gives her a happy ending. Here it is:

This story, unlike that in the autograph (and in Apuleius), is abstract and metaphysical. Psyche is taken up (‘assumpta’) into heaven but not brought there by Mercury. There is no wedding celebration and no gift of immortality. Since the preceding narrative omitted her pregnancy, it seems that Voluptas, born of her divine union and more abstraction than child, was not only born in heaven but conceived there. In the vulgate, then, Boccaccio changed his story. But he did not change his allegory. In both versions it ends in the same way:

Fulgentius and Boccaccio have both told new stories (Boccaccio has told two). Fulgentius’ is a story of Psyche’s Fall, Boccaccio’s of her redemption. Each has written a story to fit his allegory—not the other way around, as we might imagine. But the process is clearer in Boccaccio, since one can almost watch him changing the end of his narrative to make a closer fit for the allegory.

The fortunes of Boccaccio’s work remind us that words are not the only way to tell a story. In Florence, his telling (with a significant change) was painted on ‘cassoni’, or wedding chests. The earliest example, a pair of ‘cassoni’ dated c. 1470–75, was painted by the Master of the Argonauts for a Medici wedding.¹⁸ The story is told in a series of scenes on the frontals of the chests.¹⁹ The first frontal takes us from Psyche’s conception to the catastrophe of the lamp, the second from Cupid lecturing Psyche from his cypress tree to their glorious wedding. The first and last scenes identify the story as Boccaccio’s. In the scene of Psyche’s conception, the golden ball in the marriage chamber represents her father Apollo, the sun, ‘the light of the world’. The last scene shows the action in two registers. In the upper register, a kneeling Cupid pleads with Jupiter for Psyche’s hand as Venus looks on. There is no sign of the messenger Mercury or Psyche or the cup of immortality. Here, as in the opening scene, we are seeing Boccaccio’s story. But in the lower register the artist writes a different ending, with a fine picture of the wedding omitted by Boccaccio. Naturally: he is painting a wedding chest. And like all good storytellers, he suits his telling to the occasion and the audience. But he has not forgotten Boccaccio’s allegory. Boccaccio had allegorized Psyche’s marriage as the union of the soul with God. The painter treats the human marriage of his Medici patrons as a mortal reflection of that everlasting union: the members of the wedding party are standing on the ground, but with clouds under their feet so that the wedding seems to take place in heaven and earth at the same time.

Psyche had an excellent reception in Florence from Boccaccio and the ‘cassoni’ painters, but her story received even more attention in the courts of Ferrara and Mantua, where it was told and retold in various genres by a series of writers and artists. The process began in the 1470s—at about the same time as the ‘cassoni’—and it continued for a generation or so. The courtly storytellers undoubtedly knew and used the Florentine versions, especially that of Boccaccio, but they relied on a different source for Apuleius himself. Boccaccio had read the story in a manuscript. (There were several in Florence, including the one he transcribed himself.) ²⁰ The ‘cassoni’ painters took Boccaccio as their starting point, as we have seen. But the first person to tell the story in Ferrara, Matteo Maria Boiardo, used the first edition, printed in 1469.²¹ His successors built on his telling and—as the process continued—on those of each other.

Boiardo, count of Scandiano (1440/41–94), was a noble by birth and a courtier by profession.²² But he was also a famous poet and translator. He plied his trades at the glittering court of Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who had a deep interest in Apuleius. Boiardo’s first treatment of Psyche seems to have been in the verse captions he wrote for a set of tarot cards created for someone at the court.²³ Most of the deck is lost, including the Psyche card, but we have a detailed account of the whole set by a contemporary, Pier Antonio Viti (fl. 1470–1500), who described it for a noble lady of Urbino who wanted to have a deck made for herself.²⁴ Psyche, Viti tells us, appeared as the eighth card in the suit of Triumphs, representing the quality of Patience. Boiardo told her story in this tercet:

This is a very short story, but Boiardo’s tercet is only part of the text presented on the card: the card’s verse and its picture were to be read together. From Viti’s ecphrasis for the lady in Urbino we can almost see the image. He says:

Psyche is young and beautiful. The colour of her cloak presents her as a lover, for purple is the colour of the suit of Love.²⁷ The broken bow and unfeathered wings at her feet take us further into her story, alluding to a particular moment: the scene in which Venus lists the punishments she would like to inflict on the errant Cupid. These include unstringing his bow and shearing his wings.²⁸ The image on the card shows these penalties fulfilled and tells us how to read the scene: with Cupid powerless, the painted Psyche is alone and without resource—that is, in precisely the situation in which she is to show the quality of Patience that she represents. The horse beside her also embodies Patience, for Psyche, like all the characters in the suit of Triumphs, is accompanied by an animal signifying her quality.²⁹ If we read back from the picture to the tercet, however, we see that, despite appearances, Psyche is not alone after all: even at the moment shown on the card she is ‘aided in her distress’ and she will achieve her reward of immortality.

But the story on the tarot card is not only short—Psyche’s adventures boiled down to an irreducible minimum. It is also radically different from those we have seen before—Psyche’s story without the lamp, one might say. By beginning with Psyche’s misfortunes and making her an example of Patience, Boiardo and the artist have written a new story, not of curiosity punished and finally redeemed, but of endurance rewarded by immortality. Their story is what we might call a mixed-media production, told with word and image at the same time and with both being necessary to the understanding of its plot.

Boiardo’s principal engagement with Psyche, however, appears in Apulegio volgare, his translation of Apuleius’ novel into Italian for Ercole d’Este.³⁰ Boiardo had finished his translation by 1479 but it did not appear in print until 1518.³¹ Since the work is a translation, Boiardo for the most part follows the story in Apuleius very closely. But he is not a slavish translator, and the changes he makes to Apuleius’ novel in order to please himself and his courtly audience produce a subtly different story.

Two of his changes are major. First, he omits Apuleius’ book 11 (the Isis book), and substitutes the farcical conclusion of Pseudo-Lucian’s Onos (‘The Ass’), in which Lucius, now restored to human shape, is unkindly rejected by the amorous matron because she liked him better as an ass.³² The substitution deprives the novel of any hint of religious seriousness, but it also has implications for Psyche. In Apuleius, her story is imbedded in the larger story of Lucius, and we can read it as essentially the same story: both come to grief through curiosity, both suffer many afflictions, and both are finally redeemed by divine favour despite being essentially undeserving. Boiardo’s racy conclusion, which would have been more entertaining for his audience than the Isis book, takes away Psyche’s connection with Lucius.³³ She is still in the centre of the novel, but her story is now free-standing—as independent as it was in Fulgentius or Boccaccio, or on the tarot card discussed above.

Boiardo’s second major change is in the sex of Psyche’s child. In Apuleius, of course, she has a daughter, Voluptas (Met. 6.24.4). But Boiardo makes the child a boy instead, Dilecto.³⁴ In Apuleius, Voluptas comes as a surprise; all along we have been led to expect a boy.³⁵ And as readers we have to wonder what that surprise means. Is Voluptas a ‘divine child’, as some would have it, or is she the mortal child Cupid predicts if Psyche reveals his secrets?³⁶ Since Apuleius does not say, Voluptas can bear more than one interpretation, including the abstract reading (‘eternal joy and delight’) in Boccaccio’s religious allegory. Boiardo has Cupid make the same prediction to Psyche that he did in Apuleius, but for him the child is all boy from the beginning: a ‘fanciullino’, ‘fanciullo’, or ‘figliolo’.³⁷ We can still speculate about whether he is mortal or divine, but there is no surprise at the end to set us wondering.

Boiardo also makes dozens of small changes in his translation. He was a nobleman writing for Ercole’s sophisticated court, and many of his changes give the story a luxurious and sensual tone. One, in particular, would be picked up by his successors: his embellishment of Psyche’s reception in Cupid’s palace. Apuleius’ Psyche has a nap and a bath: ‘Et prius somno et mox lavacro fatigationem diluit’ (Met. 5.3.1). Boiardo’s enjoys a fragrant bath and rests on a snow-white bed: ‘ne lo odorifero bagno ralegrata e ristaurata nel candido lecto’ (Apulegio Volgare 5.3).³⁸ She sits at a table of citrus wood adorned with gold and precious gems and eats from bejewelled golden dishes, all absent in Apuleius. After dinner, both Psyches are entertained by invisible musicians. Apuleius’ Psyche hears a singer, someone playing the cithara, and a many-voiced choir (Met. 5.3.5). Boiardo’s hears two choirs:

It has been suggested that Boiardo’s two choirs singing back and forth would have reminded his readers, including Ercole, of musical performances at the court.⁴⁰ But perhaps one should put it the other way and consider that his antiphonal choirs were inspired by the court performances.

Boiardo’s translation was soon followed by three new retellings associated with the Este, each in a different genre: a verse narration by Niccolò da Correggio, a fresco cycle by Ercole de’ Roberti and its ecphrasis, and a play by Galeotto del Carretto.⁴¹ Niccolò da Correggio (1450–1508) was a cousin of Boiardo’s and, like him, was both a courtier and an accomplished poet.⁴² Around 1491, he dedicated his long Italian poem, Fabula Psiches et Cupidinis, to Ercole’s daughter Isabella d’Este, who had married Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in 1490. The first edition was printed in 1507.

Correggio’s work is the first literary telling of the story we have seen, and it is very literary indeed.⁴³ As in Apuleius, Psyche’s story is an inset in the narrative. The frame story is told in the first person by a poet struck by love’s arrow with unrequited love for a nymph. Pursuing her in vain, he finally falls asleep in a beautiful garden and, in a dream, sees Amor (whom Correggio never calls Cupido). In the imbedded story, Amor, himself a victim of love, tells the poet of his adventures with Psyche. In the concluding panel, the poet awakes and encounters Pan, another victim of unhappy love, who vouches for the truth of Amor’s story. In the end, the poet, considering his own misfortunes and those of Amor himself, renounces love altogether and advises the reader to do the same: ‘Flee fast and far because love’s arrow kills and not just stings you’.⁴⁴

The story that Amor tells has essentially the same plot as that of Cupid and Psyche in Boiardo— including the baby Dilecto (although the birth announcement does not use the word ‘son’).⁴⁵ It also includes (and further enhances) Boiardo’s enhancements of Psyche’s entertainment, emphasizing the loggia and the enclosed garden—which Amor takes nine stanzas to describe (Fabula, stanzas 65–73). Nonetheless, it is not the same story, and it is unlike any of its predecessors. It does not tell of punishment for curiosity, or of the soul’s union with God or Love, or of patience rewarded. Instead, it is a cautionary tale of the vulnerability of gods and men alike to the vicissitudes of love. More to the point, however, it is not the story of Cupid and Psyche at all, but rather of Cupid (or Amor), the first-person narrator. The point of view, the emotions, the misfortunes all belong to him, and we see everything through his eyes, including himself. When Apuleius’ Psyche lights her lamp and sees her beautiful husband, we register every detail through her eyes: from his golden hair to his gorgeous wings, to the bow and arrows at his feet (Met. 5.22.5–7). Correggio’s Amor, by contrast, filters Psyche’s reaction through his own vision of himself: ‘I don’t think I ever looked better’, he says, and then proceeds with his description.⁴⁶ The story of Amor, with Psyche no longer the focus of interest, is not edifying and is not intended to be. Rather, it is a piquant entertainment for courtly readers who knew other tellings and would appreciate something new.

Even more, it is also the centrepiece of a highly self-conscious poem about stories, storytellers, and their audiences.⁴⁷ The external audience is specifically the new bride, Isabella d’Este. The external narrator is Correggio, who perhaps resembles the primary internal narrator, the suffering poet, who is of course the audience of the second internal narrator, Amor. In the concluding frame, the poet, our primary internal narrator, again speaks in his own voice and tells us that he told his dream (and Amor’s story), as well as his own story, to Pan, and that Pan related it back to him. But no more. The poem is a literary Rubik’s cube of intersecting and imbedded stories, narrators, and audiences, too complicated to disentangle in the present discussion.

Not long after Correggio’s poem, Ercole d’Este began to work with his court painter, Ercole de’ Roberti, on the programme for a frescoed hall in his country palace, Belriguardo.⁴⁸ The Duke had a long-standing interest in Apuleius, but it has been suggested that his acquisition of Boccaccio’s Genealogies in 1489 inspired him to think seriously about Psyche.⁴⁹ I will come back to this point. Belriguardo is largely destroyed and the Psyche room with it, but we have a contemporary description dedicated to the Duke by Sabadino degli Arienti in 1497.⁵⁰

Both Sabadino’s description and the painted story are indebted to Correggio.⁵¹ It seems clear, however, that the tone of the cycle did not come from Correggio. The Duke is known to have been a deeply religious man with a particular interest in the soul, and Sabadino describes the work as a moral allegory. At the beginning, he says, ‘On the walls one sees depicted with rare piety, under a poetic veil of allegory, with most felicitous painting, the celestial nymph Psyche’.⁵² And at the end: ‘These events and acts of pious love, full of rare wisdom, were represented […] by the hands of the excellent painter who painted such a great pious subject following your ducal instruction’.⁵³ Sabadino does not identify the pious message, but since most of the frescoes seem to have shown Psyche’s labours, one might infer that it had to do with the earthly trials of the soul. But there are two tantalizing details at the end. First: Psyche is not offered a cup of immortality, although Mercury escorts her to heaven for her marriage and she joins the gods at the celestial feast.⁵⁴ I think that the omission is deliberate and that the Duke took his cue from Boccaccio, who also omitted this detail. Why? I would say that it is because, for both Boccaccio and Ercole, Psyche is Soul and the soul is immortal by definition. The second detail is Psyche’s child: ‘a charming daughter named Voluptas, fruit of the wretched world’.⁵⁵ What are we to make of her? Is she divine since she is born in heaven, or mortal as a product of the wretched world?

The room housing the frescoes was large, Sabadino says, with six glass windows overlooking the secluded garden—a clear echo of the loggia and enclosed garden described by Boiardo and, more lavishly, by Correggio.⁵⁶ The room, then, was intended to recall a distinguishing feature of Cupid’s palace. But there is more: the frescoes show Zephyr bringing Psyche down to a grassy wooded spot, ‘where there is a palace of marvellous beauty—like this one’.⁵⁷ That is, like the Duke’s palace, Belriguardo, itself. Scholars have suggested that the fresco actually depicted Belriguardo.⁵⁸ If they are right, one could say that the Duke was bringing his world into that of the story—or perhaps the other way around. In either case, the telling of the tale has been adjusted in order to create a resemblance between two fairy-tale realms, the one of Apuleius’ Cupid, the other of the Duke of Ferrara.⁵⁹

Soon after Ercole’s frescoes, yet another courtier and poet, Galeotto Del Corretto (c. 1455–1530), completed a play called Noze de Psiche e Cupidine, which is probably to be identified with the ‘new comedy’ he sent Isabella d’Este around 1500.⁶⁰ Del Carretto used language from Boiardo and perhaps also from Correggio.⁶¹ His story is the familiar one until it takes a surprising turn at the end. The gods agree to Psyche’s becoming immortal and marrying Cupid, but at Venus’ request something else must happen first: Psyche’s sisters must be brought back to life. Accordingly, Mercury stages a grand reunion, bringing Psyche together with her sisters, parents, and brothers-in-law at her father’s house. All this, so that the penitent sisters can receive Psyche’s forgiveness. Their resurrection, it seems, has been for her spiritual benefit, and the scene ends with Psyche’s farewell as she departs for the ‘triumphant chorus of the glorious court in heaven’.⁶² Mercury then duly escorts her to heaven, where she drinks the cup of immortality and is married to Cupid. Del Carretto has told yet a different story—as religious as any we have seen before, but one whose happy ending requires not just patience from Psyche, but reconciliation and forgiveness, and this by the design of the formerly vengeful Venus.

Psyche—not Cupid as in Correggio—is Del Carretto’s principal subject. And since the story is a drama, for once it is Psyche’s own voice we hear—not the narrator’s or Cupid’s— exclaiming over Cupid’s beauty: ‘Oh, what wings he has! Oh what beautiful / golden hair! Ah, what a beautiful face!’⁶³ In fact, the story is told in many voices. Everyone has something to say: the familiar principals, of course, but also Psyche’s parents, the sisters’ husbands, and even the ants and other helpers. But it is more complicated than that, for there are also voices outside the action: the voice of Del Carretto himself in the long argumentum that tells the whole story before the play begins, and of the otherworldly chorus of Psyche’s invisible servants, whose songs comment on and interpret the events. Their songs, written for performance and perhaps scored by the famous court musician Tromboncino, appear throughout, and also end each act, except for the last, which ends in epithalamia sung by Apollo and the Graces.⁶⁴

Writers and artists from late antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century retold Apuleius’ ‘Cupid and Psyche’ many times, constantly changing it to produce new stories suited to their own times and interests. Fulgentius and Boccaccio rewrote it to fit their Christian allegories of the soul’s fall or redemption. ‘Cassoni’ painters changed the ending of Boccaccio’s story to put it on a marriage chest. Boiardo told a short tale without curiosity and the lamp that made Psyche an exemplum of patience rewarded. He also wrote a translation whose luxurious embellishments and change of the sex of Psyche’s child, were used in later retellings. Correggio fashioned an elaborate literary tour de force of interlocking stories and storytellers, with the first-person narrator Amor at the centre. Ercole d’Este, using Correggio and probably Boccaccio together with his own religious vision, created a fresco programme that apparently both emphasized the earthly trials of the soul and presented his villa as the house of Cupid. Del Carretto wrote a play with musical interludes in which Psyche had to forgive her enemies in order to earn her place in heaven. We can imagine that Apuleius would have shaken his head in amazement at these retellings, so different from his own ‘Cupid and Psyche’, but since he was a consummate borrower of other people’s stories, he surely would have understood.

Bryn Mawr College

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¹ For Fulgentius (fl. 550), see B. G. Hays, Fulgentius the Mythographer (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms 1996). For Boccaccio (1313–1375), see V. Branca, Giovanni Boccaccio: Profilo biografico (Florence 1977).

² In Fulgentius, Psyche is Anima (Soul), her sisters Caro (Flesh) and Ultronietas (Free Will). Boccaccio’s discussion exists in two versions: the autograph and the vulgate (see below). In the autograph, Psyche is the rational soul, her sisters the vegetative and sensitive souls; in the vulgate, the three sisters are not three souls but three faculties (‘potentie’) of the soul.

³ Fulgentius, Mitologiae in Opera, ed. R. Helm (Leipzig 1898). For Fulgentius’ narrative, see J. H. Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the ‘Golden Ass’: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton-Oxford 2008) 53–59. For Fulgentius as an allegorist and a text and translation of Mit. 3.6, see R. H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass. The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford 2007) 41–47.

⁴ The only reference to Psyche’s immortality appears in the title, which is quite possibly a later addition; see Hays, Fulgentius (n. 1, above) 173. It is not even hinted at in the narrative or the allegory. Cupid marries Psyche, but not joyously: ‘Postea Iove petente in coniugio accepit’ (Mit. 3.6.116).

⁵ ‘consanguineae caritatis invincibilis ardor maritale obumbravit imperium’ (Mit. 3.6.115). All translations in this chapter are my own.

⁶ ‘curiositatem, suae salutis novercam, arripuit et facillimam credulitatem, quae semper deceptionum mater est […] arripit’ (Mit. 3.6.115).

⁷ ‘inmodesto amoris torretur affectu’ (Mit. 3.6.115).

⁸ ‘Cupido […] domo extorrem ac profugam derelinquit’ (Mit. 3.6.115).

⁹ ‘Adam quamvis videat nudum se non videt, donec de concupiscentiae arbore comedat’ (Mit. 3.6.118).

¹⁰ ‘quasi cupiditate nudata’ (Mit. 3.6.118).

¹¹ Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 112–13; B. L. Hijmans Jr., ‘Boccaccio’s Amor and Psyche’, in Symposium apuleianum groninganum, eds B. L. Hijmans and V. Schmidt (Groningen 1981) 30–45.

¹² For Boccaccio’s narrative, see Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 110–18. Carver, Protean Ass (n. 3, above) 133–41, presents a text and translation of the vulgate version and a discussion of Boccaccio on fiction.

¹³ Mart. Cap. 1.7. But Boccaccio read the name as Entelochia, which he glosses in his allegory as ‘perfecta aetas’. He would have seen Entelochia in his manuscript, for in texts from the tenth century onwards it wrongly replaced Endelechia. See Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 53, with earlier bibliography.

¹⁴ ‘Hec autem Apollinis, id est solis, filia dicitur, eius scilicet qui mundi vera lux est Deus, cum nullius alterius potentie sit rationalem creare animam, nisi Dei’ (Gen. 5.22.12); ‘divine stirpi […], id est amori honesto, seu ipsi Deo’ (Gen. 5.22.13).

¹⁵ G. Martellotti, ‘Le due redazioni delle Genealogie del Boccaccio’, in Dante e Boccaccio e altri scrittori dall’umanesimo al romanticismo (Florence 1983) 137–63; P. G. Ricci, ‘Contributi per un’edizione critica della “Genealogia deorum gentilium”’, in Studi sulla vita e le opere del Boccaccio (Milan 1985) 189–225. The autograph is printed in the edition of Vincenzo Romano, Genealogie deorum gentilium, 2 vols (Bari 1951), the vulgate in that of V. Zaccaria, Genealogie deorum gentilium, vols 7–8 in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. V. Branca, 12 vols (Milan 1998).

¹⁶ ‘Opera viri adiuta perfecit iniuncta; cuius postremo ad Iovem precibus actum est ut in Veneris deveniret gratiam et in celis assumpta, Cupidinis perpetuo frueretur coniugio, cui peperit Voluptatem’ (Gen. 5.22.10, ed. Zaccaria).

¹⁷ ‘Et erumnis et miseriis purgata presumptuosa superbia atque inobedientia, bonum divine dilectionis atque contemplationis iterum reassumit, eique se iungit perpetuo, dum perituris dimissis rebus in eternam defertur gloriam, et ibi ex amore parturit Voluptatem, id est delectationem et letitiam sempiternam’ (Gen. 5.22.17, ed. Romano and ed. Zaccaria.)

¹⁸ The ‘cassoni’ are dated around 1470 by H. Nützmann, ‘Verschlüsselt in Details: Hochzeitbilder für Lorenzo de’Medici’, Jahrbuch Preussischer Kulturbesitz 34 (1997) 223–35. They are dated around 1475 by S. Cavicchioli, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche: An Illustrated History (New York 2002) 66.

¹⁹ The frontals are illustrated in Cavicchioli, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche (n. 18, above) plates 35–36; Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) plates 15–16.

²⁰ Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 108–10; J. Gaisser, ‘Apuleius in Florence: from Boccaccio to Lorenzo de’Medici’, in Classica et Beneventana: Essays Presented to Virginia Brown on the Occasion of her 65 th Birthday, eds F. T. Coulson and A. A. Grotans (Turnhout 2007) 43–70.

²¹ E. Fumagalli, Matteo Maria Boiardo volgarizzatore dell’‘Asino d’Oro’: contributo allo studio della fortuna dell’Apuleio nell’Umanesimo (Padua 1988) 1–28, 31–91.

²² See F. Forti, ‘Matteo Maria Boiardo’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 11 (1969) 211–23.

²⁴ Viti also presented an allegory; Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 183–84. Foà, Tarocchi (n. 23, above) edits and discusses his description.

²⁵ ‘Patientia hebbe Psiche ai casi soi, / E perhò fu soccorsa nelli affanni, / E fatta Dea nel fin che è exemplo a noi’. Boiardo, Tarocchi (n. 23, above) 25–7.

²⁶ ‘La pictura de Psiche è in forma di Nynfa, di morello manto vestita, con il bianco camiso di sotto, e tiene cum ambedue le mane parte del suo manto; et ha a suoi piedi, da l’un de canti, uno arco ropto, con uno scrito riverso a lui di sotto; e da l’altro canto due ali spenachiate et uno cavallo leardo, col freno morello, che pazientemente essendo generoso, patisse ogni fatica. E sopra el capo di dicta Psiche sono tre versi che di lei ragionano’. Viti, Illustrazione, in Foà, Tarocchi (n. 23, above) 52.

²⁷ ‘El campo de le qual carte è colore morello nel gioco de Amore, che significa Amore, cioè colore violaceo’. Viti, Illustrazione, in Foà, Tarocchi (n. 23, above) 31.

²⁸ In Apul. Met. 5.30.5–6 Venus suggests destruction of two sorts: of Cupid’s equipment (undoing his quiver, blunting his arrows, unstringing his bow, and putting out his torch) and of his person (shaving his hair and clipping his wings). The artist has selected an easily depicted item from each list, showing the bow broken rather than unstrung for the sake of clarity.

²⁹ ‘Et a piede di tucti li Trionfi sono animali di quella medesima natura che è il trionfo’. Viti, Illustrazione, in Foà,

³⁰ There is no modern edition of the translation as a whole, but the story of Psyche has been edited by Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 217–335.

³¹ Ercole’s jealously limited its circulation. For its publication history, see Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 163– 84.

³² For Lucian Boiardo’s reliance on the translation of Niccolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), who was also active in the Este court in the 1470s, see M. Acocella, ‘L’Asino d’oro’ nel rinascimento: Dai volgarizzamenti alle raffigurazioni pittoriche (Ravenna 2001) 17–75.

³³ See M. Trecca, La magia rinnovata (Florence 1995) 71–72.

³⁴ ‘Cosí pervene Psiche in mano de Cupido, e di lor nacque quello figliolo che Dilecto è chiamato’. Boiardo, Apulegio volgare 6.24, ed. Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 345.

³⁵ See Apuleius, Cupid and Psyche, trans. with intro. and comm. by E. J. Kenney (Cambridge 1990) 224.

³⁶ For ‘divine child’, see Kenney, Cupid and Psyche (n. 35, above) 224.

³⁷ For Cupid’s prediction, see Apul. Met. 5.11.6 and Boiardo, Apulegio volgare 5.11, ed. Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 257: ‘Già cresceremo la famiglia nostra, perché nel ventre tuo mi porti un fanciullino, il quale, scoprendo tu li secreti nostri, nascerà omo mortale, e guardandoli fidelmente, serà divino’.

³⁸ Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 241.

³⁹ ‘Una concordantia de voce varie e diverse, unita con mirabile arte, se fece udire cantando. Erano questi dui cori de molta gente […] et ora separatamente et ora insieme con molte cancione la solitaria logia alegrarno e tutto el chiuso giardino’. Boiardo, Apulegio volgare 5.3, ed. Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 241.

⁴⁰ Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 241 n.

⁴¹ See Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 184–95, with earlier bibliography.

⁴² P. Farenga, ‘Niccolò da Correggio’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 29 (1983) 466–74.

⁴³ Trecca, La magia rinnovata (n. 33, above). See also R. Stillers, ‘Erträumte Kunstwelt. Niccolò Correggios Fabula Psiches et Cupidinis (1491)’, in Der Mythos von Amor und Psyche in der europäischen Renaissance, eds J. Jankovics and S. Katalin Németh (Budapest 2002) 131–50.

⁴⁴ ‘Fuggiti presto, di buon passo e longie, / Ché’l stral d’amor ucide e non pur pongie’. Niccolò da Correggio, Fabula Psiches et Cupidinis 179.7–8, in Opere, Scrittori d’Italia 244, ed. A. Tissoni Benvenuti (Bari 1969).

⁴⁵ ‘Psiche divenne mia, como io t’ho decto, / e gravida, di nui nacque il Dilecto’. Correggio, Fabula (n. 44, above) 169.7–8.

⁴⁶ ‘Io ero credo alor di più bellezza / che mai nel mio trïonfo io mi mostrassi’. Correggio, Fabula (n. 44, above) 107.1–2.

⁴⁷ See especially Trecca, La magia rinnovata (n. 33, above) 72–75, 133.

⁴⁸ W. L. Gundersheimer, Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d’Este: The ‘De triumphis religionis’ of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti (Geneva 1972) 64 n. 55. See also S. Cavicchioli, ‘Amore e Psiche nella delizia estense di Belriguardo’, La Diana 1 (1995) 125–45.

⁴⁹ Cavicchioli, ‘Amore e Psiche’ (n. 48, above) 128.

⁵⁰ G. Ghinassi, ‘Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 4 (1962) 154–56. The description is edited in Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above).

⁵¹ The story in the cycle began at the same place as in Correggio: with Venus’ envy and her instructions to Cupid. Sabadino takes many phrases from Correggio, and he mentions his telling of the story: ‘Di che anchora tanta beata cosa in legiadro e dolce verso materno Nicolao da Coregio, signore claro e facundo e d’arme valido huo[mo] ha depincto, secondo Apoleio autore prestate scrive’. Sabadino, De triumphis religionis, ed. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 64–5. But Sabadino does not follow Correggio and Boiardo in changing the sex of Psyche’s child (see below).

⁵² ‘In le pariete si vede con moralità singulare, sotto poetico velamento hystoriata con felicissima pictura, Psyche celeste nympha’. Sabadino, De triumphis religionis, ed. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 62.

⁵³ ‘Questi accidenti et acti de morale amore, pieni de singulari sentimenti sono effigiati […] de mane de optimo pictore ferrariense che tanta morale cosa pinse secondo la tua ducal instructione’. Sabadino, De triumphis religionis, ed. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 64.

⁵⁴ Sabadino, De triumphis religionis, ed. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 64. Cf. Cavicchioli, ‘Amore e Psiche’ (n. 48, above) 133: ‘si ha l’impressione che fosse omessa anche l’offerta a Psyiche dell’ambrosia, cioè del segno tangibile dell’immortalità’.

⁵⁵ ‘una vaga figlia nominata Voluptate, fructo del misero mondo’. Sabadino, De triumphis religionis, ed. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 64.

⁵⁶ Sabadino, De triumphis religionis, ed. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 62.

⁵⁷ ‘dove è uno palazo come questo de maravigliosa belleza’. Sabadino, De triumphis religionis, ed. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 62.

⁵⁸ ‘The phrase “come questo” raises the possibility that this was a depiction of Belriguardo itself’. Gundersheimer, Art and Life (n. 48, above) 62 n. 54. Cavicchioli, ‘Amore e Psiche’ (n. 48, above) 131–2, suggests that Correggio’s detailed description of Amor’s gardens might have been inspired by those of the Duke.

⁵⁹ The idea of likening a grand contemporary villa to Cupid’s palace had an interesting fortuna that would be worth investigating. For example, in 1500, Filippo Beroaldo, commenting on Met. 5.1, whether independently or influenced by the treatment of Ercole’s palace by Boiardo, Correggio, and Ercole himself in the Sala di Psiche, described the villa of his friend Mino de’ Rossi as like ‘Cupid’s country house (‘diversorium’)’. See Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 3, above) 233–37. It has also been suggested that contemporary descriptions of the garden of Agostino Chigi’s Farnesina (whose loggia is decorated with Raphael’s Psyche fresco cycle) closely match that of Cupid’s garden in Correggio. J. Shearman, ‘Die Loggia der Psyche in der Villa Farnesina und der Probleme der letzten Phase von Raffaels graphischem Stil’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 60 (1964) 59–100 (73).

⁶⁰ See R. Riccardi, ‘Galeotto Del Carretto’, Dizionario biographico degli Italiani 36 (1988) 415–19. For the text, see Galeotto Del Carretto, Noze de Psiche e Cupidine, in Teatro del Quattrocento: Le corti padane, eds A. Tissoni Benvenuti and M. P. Mussini Sacchi (Torino 1983) 611–725. The history of the comedy is discussed by Tissoni Benvenuti in the same volume, 559–67. For a detailed modern discussion, see M. Minutelli, ‘Poesia e teatro di Galeotto dal Carretto. Riflessioni in margine al carteggio con Isabella d’Este’, Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 7.1–2 (2004) 123–78.

⁶¹ See Fumagalli, Boiardo (n. 21, above) 145–50.

⁶² ‘Vale, mio padre, e tu mia matre posa, / che me ne vado al trïunfante coro / de la corte superna e glorïosa’. Del Carretto, Noze (n. 60, above) Act 5, 323–25.

⁶³ ‘Ohimè ch’egli ha le piume! Ohimè che belli / et aurati capelli! ahi che bel viso!’ Del Carretto, Noze (n. 60, above) Act 3, 12–13.

⁶⁴ For the music, see C. Cavicchi, ‘D’alcune musiche sul tema d’Amore e Psiche nel Cinquecento,’ in Psyché à la Renaissance: Actes du LII e Colloque international d’études humanistes (29 juin – 2 juillet 2009), eds M. Bélime-Droguet, V. Gély, L. Mailho, and P. Vendrix (Turnhout 2013) 159–77.