Psyche, ca. 1878

The museum owns a rich collection of sculptures by Paul De Vigne. The Ghent artist belonged to the realist movement among Belgian sculptors who found inspiration in Italian Renaissance sculpture and in Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, a French sculptor who was very influential in Belgium. In portraits and allegorical figures, as here with this Psyche, De Vigne combined a certain classicism with a surprising naturalness. The girl's head is slightly inclined, the neck is stretched and the skin is reproduced in detail. The contrast between her serious look and her youthful age gives her a special power. The Greek 'psyche' means both 'soul' and 'butterfly'. Hence the butterfly wings on her back. In antiquity, the butterfly refers to death, in Christian tradition to resurrection. In relation to the dragonfly on the pedestal, a symbol of elegance and lightness, but also of sin, it possibly refers to the struggle between good and evil.