AMORE, COMPAGNIE DEL DIVINO: V. ORATORIO DEL DIVINO AMORE, COMPAGNIE DEL. AMORE and PSICHE. - The myth of P. (the soul) found poetic expression in Books IV-VI of Apuleio’s Metamorphoses. Married to A., P., because of her curiosity, sees her beloved vanish; but, after long and painful trials, she finds him again and is reunited with him in eternal nuptials.
Through Neoplatonic interpretations the tale acquired high moral value, prefiguring the concept that love of divine things is a pledge of immortality. Thus elaborated, it presented itself to early Christian art as a poetic illustration of eternal happiness and could appear alongside the Good Shepherd, orants, or Jonah at rest. Furnished with butterfly wings, the emblem of the soul, P. gathers roses in the pure radiance of heaven together with A., or delights with him in the eternal dance, in frescoes in the catacombs of Domitilla or in the mosaics of S. Costanza. The Alexandrian group of A. and P. embracing appears on a glass base with a Christian formula, and very rarely in sculpture, where a relief also associates it with the dextrarum iunctio, as a wish for reunion in the other life. In the paradisal vintage, P. offers A. a basket of grapes, an expression of heavenly delights.