CUPID

Cupid: translation

   The son of Venus and Mercury, Cupid is the god of love who causes those he pierces with his arrows to fall in love. He appears in Parmigianino's Cupid Carving His Bow (1535; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) and in Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia (1601-1602; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) surrounded by various objects related to learning that denote the power of love over reason. Sometimes Cupid is chastised for causing amorous indiscretions, including his own mother's illicit affair with Mars, the scene rendered by Bartolomeo Manfredi in his Cupid Punished by Mars (1605-1610; Chicago, Art Institute). In Cupid Complaining to Venus (c. 1529; London, National Gallery) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, the god of love is surrounded by a swarm of bees and he informs his mother that he has been stung. The scene, which some interpret as warning against the deadly risks of venereal disease then spreading through Europe, stems from the writings of Theocritus, who likens the wounds Cupid inflicts with his arrows to bee stings. Cupid himself succumbs to love when he meets Psyche, their marriage banquet frescoed by Raphael and assistants in the Villa Farnesina, Rome (1513-1518).