Caravaggio's Cupid - Paperback

by Helen Langdon (Author)

This accessible and attractive illustrated volume focuses on one of Caravaggio's iconic artworks, Victorious Cupid.

Usually housed at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Victorious Cupid (1601-02) by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), also known as Amor Vincit Omnia, shows Cupid, the Roman god of desire, as a young boy, in an animated pose while wearing dark eagle wings and holding two arrows. It was the last allegorical work Caravaggio painted in Rome. The music manuscript on the floor shows a large V in the margin of the right-hand page which is believed to acknowledges Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1537), who commissioned the painting, and is said to have prized Victorious Cupid above all other works in his collection.

This publication features a description of the painting and summary of Caravaggio's early life, against the background of his artistic development and the intellectual interests of his patrons, and within the broader context of the theme of "love conquers all". Author Helen Langdon also examines the meaning of the painting, and considers how Caravaggio brings the subject to earth, from the heavens to the bedroom, mocking the idealisations of renaissance art.

Works by Caravaggio on public view in America can be seen at The Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth, TX; The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT; and Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI.

Author Biography

Helen Langdon has worked for the education department at the National Gallery, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery, London. She is the author of Caravaggio: A Life (1999) and the editor of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque sections of the Macmillan Dictionary of Art.