William-Adolphe Bouguereau loved a sickly-sweet romance, and the story of Cupid and Psyche was a perfect inspiration. Like his fellow Neoclassical artists, Bouguereau often depicted scenes from the classical stories of ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration.

So what’s happening in this melodramatic scene?
The story of Cupid and Psyche is an excerpt from the book Metamorphoses, written in the 2nd century AD by the Roman prose author Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis.

An oracle had foretold that the beautiful princess Psyche would marry a monster neither gods nor men can resist, and that this monster waited for her on a mountain top. And so with lamentations and a funeral dirge, Psyche and her family climb the high peak and leave her there to await her fate. But instead of a monster, Zephyr, god of the west wind gently carries Psyche to a heavenly meadow where she will meet her prophesied partner, the young god Cupid. This is the moment Bouguereau has captured—Psyche overcome with relief, swept off to her new life.