Psyche by Angela Lago (2010): illustration of an old tale and a correlation with its possible iconographic sources

Abstract

The article delves into the work Psiquê [Psyche], a children’s illustration book by Angela Lago published in 2010, based on Apuleius’s tale The Golden Ass. Starting from an analysis of Lago’s award-winning work, the research revisits an important artist in Brazilian children’s illustration. It explores the literary sources of the ancient tale and, as a distinguishing feature among other productions on the same work, draws connections between Lago’s images and their possible iconographic sources, including works by artists from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The argument is grounded in the concept of “image” as proposed by French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman. Formally, the readers’ imagination is stimulated by an atmosphere of images with blurred contours, strong contrasts between light and dark, and characters depicted through shadows and silhouettes. It was found that the illustrations reference the literature of Ophelia from Hamlet and the myth of Narcissus, updating the tale and its iconographic tradition in several ways: subverting the iconography of Eros by also giving him butterfly wings, which are commonly attributed to Psyche; including narcissus flowers as the protagonists draw closer—flowers that are recurring elements in canonical artworks related to the aforementioned literatures; among other connections. Finally, it is noted that Lago updates the tale through the eruption of photographic images from other times, some related to war and the Jewish Holocaust, prompting the reader to connect real-world memories within a narrative that was, until then, mythological.