The second panel. According to the prophecy of an ancient oracle, Psyche is to become the wife of an unknown, malevolent deity. The girl’s kin leave her on a mountain top to await her encounter with him. With the aid of Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, the enamoured Cupid, the cause of Psyche's "lamentable" marriage, transports the girl to his palace on the Isles of the Blessed.

The Nabi group formed in Paris in 1888 and took its name from a Hebrew word for "prophet". It included Maurice Denis, Paul Serusier, Edouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel. The artists were united by their breadth of interests, their intellectuality, and fascination with religious philosophy, music, Symbolist poetry and the esoteric doctrines of the East. The basis for the Nabis' symbolic art was provided by Gauguin's late style ("Synthetism") and Japanese colour woodblock prints. Denis was the ideological inspirer and chief theoretician of the Nabis. Among themselves the "prophets" adopted "secret names". His friends dubbed Denis "le Nabi aux belles icones" – "the Nabi of the beautiful icons".