Two Masterpieces are Better Than One

"Landscape with Psyche outside the Palace of Cupid ('The Enchanted Castle')", 1664 

Claude, 1604/5?-1682

Oil on canvas, 87.1 x 151.3 cm

The National Gallery, London

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosey lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

~William Shakespeare 

This painting is hanging in the National Gallery. I didn't spend an overwhelming amount of time there, but every time I went, I wound up just staring at this painting. No one else seemed particularly interested, but I was in awe. To me, it is the perfect blend of the real world and the romanticized mythological realm of Psyche. So many works of art transport the viewer to the subjects' world; and here I was being shown how Psyche had ended up in some corner of my world. It was as if Claude had given me hope that the beautiful and the fantastic were possible. It was the same feeling I had when I read Sonnet 116, actually. Somehow the two are tied together in my mind now, as if the strokes of Claude's brush had produced the visual version of Shakespeare's words. Which, now that I really think about it, is a bit odd because Psyche doesn't really have anything to do with Shakespeare. Maybe it has something to do with the story of Cupid and Psyche, and how relevant this Sonnet is to their relationship... Anyway, these two little bits of heaven are filed away together in my mind, next to all the other bits of heaven I've seen so far in my short life. Enjoy.