Cupid and Psyche in the context of "Literary fairy tale"

The Portrait of Terentius Neo is a Roman fresco, created circa 50 AD, depicting a couple holding objects important to literacy. It was found in Pompeii in the House of Terentius Neo in Regio 7, Insula 2, 6, and is now in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples.

It is highly unusual for individualized painted portraits to survive from the Roman era, but holding objects to do with literacy is common in portraits, which are mostly more idealized, and may be intended to represent authors, or real people depicted as dead authors. That does not seem to be the case here. In its original setting the portrait was underneath a smaller painting showing Cupid and Psyche in a "passionate embrace", Psyche with wings, and her buttocks mostly displayed to the viewer.

Eros (UK: /ˈɪərɒs, ˈɛrɒs/, US: /ˈɛrɒs, ˈɛroʊs/ ; Ancient Greek: Ἔρως, lit. 'Love, Desire') is the Greek god of love and sex. The Romans referred to him as Cupid or Amor. In the earliest account, he is a primordial god, while in later accounts he is the child of Aphrodite.

He is usually presented as a handsome young man, though in some appearances he is a juvenile boy full of mischief, ever in the company of his mother. In both cases, he is winged and carries his signature bow and arrows, which he uses to make both mortals and immortal gods fall in love, often under the guidance of Aphrodite. His role in myths is mostly complementary, and he often appears in the presence of Aphrodite and the other love gods and often acts as a catalyst for people to fall in love, but has little unique mythology of his own; the most major exception being the myth of Eros and Psyche, the story of how he met and fell in love with his wife.

In classical mythology, Cupid /ˈkjuːpɪd/ (Latin: Cupīdō [kʊˈpiːdoː], meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars. He is also known as Amor /ˈɑːmɔːr/ (Latin: Amor, "love"). His Greek counterpart is Eros.Although Eros is generally portrayed as a slender winged youth in Classical Greek art, during the Hellenistic period, he was increasingly portrayed as a chubby boy. During this time, his iconography acquired the bow and arrow that represent his source of power: a person, or even a deity, who is shot by Cupid's arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire. In myths, Cupid is a minor character who serves mostly to set the plot in motion. He is a main character only in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, in which he is wounded by his own weapons and experiences the ordeal of love. Although other extended stories are not told about him, his tradition is rich in poetic themes and visual scenarios, such as "Love conquers all" and the retaliatory punishment or torture of Cupid.

In art, Cupid often appears in multiples as the Amores /əˈmɔːriːz/ (in the later terminology of art history, Italian amorini), the equivalent of the Greek Erotes. Cupids are a frequent motif of both Roman art and later Western art of the classical tradition. In the 15th century, the iconography of Cupid starts to become indistinguishable from the putto.

The Feast of the Gods or Banquet of the Gods as a subject in art showing a group of deities at table has a long history going back into antiquity. Showing Greco-Roman deities, it enjoyed a revival in popularity in the Italian Renaissance, and then in the Low Countries during the 16th century, when it was popular with Northern Mannerist painters, at least partly as an opportunity to show copious amounts of nudity.

Often the occasion shown was specifically either the wedding of Cupid and Psyche or that of Peleus and Thetis, but other works show other occasions, especially the Feast of Bacchus, or a generalized feast. While the wedding of Cupid and Psyche is just the happy ending of Psyche's story, the wedding of Peleus and Thetis is part of the grand narrative of Greek mythology. The feast was interrupted by Eris, goddess of discord, who threw the golden Apple of Discord inscribed "for the most beautiful" into the company, provoking the argument that led to the Judgement of Paris, and ultimately to the Trojan War. Eris is sometimes shown in the air with the apple, or the apple with the diners, and sometimes the feast forms a background scene to a painting of the Judgement, or vice versa. This wedding was also used as a political symbol around the time of the marriage of the Dutch leader William the Silent to Charlotte of Bourbon in 1575.

"Beauty and the Beast" is a fairy tale written by the French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published anonymously in 1740 in La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins (The Young American and Marine Tales).

Villeneuve's original story was abridged, revised, and published by French novelist Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in Magasin des enfants (Children's Collection) which became the most commonly retold version. Later, Andrew Lang retold the story in Blue Fairy Book, a part of the Fairy Book series, in 1889. The fairy-tale was influenced by the story of Petrus Gonsalvus as well as Ancient Latin stories such as "Cupid and Psyche" from The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis in the second century AD, and "The Pig King", an Italian fairy-tale published by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in The Facetious Nights of Straparola around 1550.