Ascolta l'arte e mettila da parte

September 15th, 2026

 EPISODE N.21

If I asked you to imagine love, to give it a face, to turn it into a person, what would it look like?
I’m fairly sure that many of you would immediately think of a child or a little winged angel. A chubby creature, perhaps naked, with two small wings on its back, a bow, and a quiver full of arrows.

Cupid.
It is probably one of the most recognizable images in our culture.
But have you ever wondered where it comes from?
Why should love look like that? Why should it have wings? Why should it be armed with a bow and arrows? And, above all: has it always looked this way?

The answer is no.
What seems to us like an incredibly simple, almost universal image is actually the result of a very long history. A history of transformations, overlaps, and reinterpretations.
Because what we call Cupid today was born from a much older figure: Eros.
And if we really want to understand who that little boy is who continues to appear in paintings, sculptures, sarcophagi, and even in popular culture, we have to travel back more than two thousand years.

And we will discover that, at the beginning, Eros was not a child at all.
Our story begins in Archaic Greece.
And here we encounter our first surprise.
In Hesiod’s Theogony, one of the oldest texts of Greek mythology, Eros appears at the very beginning of the formation of the cosmos. He is not yet the son of Venus. He is not an adolescent. He is not a child. He does not yet have a bow and arrows.

Eros is a primordial power.
He is the force of desire and attraction that makes generation possible. In other words, before love becomes a story between two people, it is a force that sets the world in motion. And it is an extraordinarily powerful idea. Because it means that love—or rather, desire—is not yet simply something we feel toward another person. It is a cosmic force. It is what drives beings to unite, to generate, to create.

But naturally, the moment human beings begin to tell stories about and represent the gods, even an abstract force can acquire a body.
And so Eros slowly begins to take shape.
And this brings us to one of the earliest images that allows us to see this transformation.

We are in Greece, at the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century BC.
On a red-figure stamnos, now preserved at the British Museum, we see three winged youths flying above the waves.
One of the three is identified by an inscription: Himeros, Desire.
The other two are unnamed, but they belong to the same universe of winged deities who personify different forms of desire.

And look at them.
They are young, nude, with long hair coiled above the neck and hanging over the ear, and large wings.
But something has changed.
Desire has acquired a body. And that body can fly. The wings are destined to become one of Eros’s most recognizable attributes, but we are still a long way from the image of the little armed god we know today. The bow and arrows have yet to arrive.
And Eros’s age is destined to change as well.

Because in the centuries that follow, especially in the Hellenistic world and later in the Roman world, Eros can take on the appearance of an adolescent or a child. He can appear alone, or he can multiply.
And when he multiplies, something even more interesting happens.

We now move to Rome, in the second century AD.
A group of lively little putti runs all around a small marble sarcophagus, perhaps intended for the body of a child. They seem to be engaged in various athletic activities. On the front, at the center, one putto is being awarded a prize, while around him others are fighting in the presence of judges. And on the short left side we find a particularly curious detail: two putti are busy oiling the body of their little companion.

But who are these small winged beings?
And why are they represented on a sarcophagus, a symbol of death?
They are the Erotes, the plural of Eros.
They are not necessarily recounting a specific episode from a myth. Rather, they are a multiplication of the figure of Eros. Love becomes many little beings who can be engaged in all kinds of activities: harvesting grapes, wrestling, playing musical instruments, riding dolphins.

And this multiplication has an almost poetic meaning. Because if Eros is desire, the Erotes are its infinite manifestations. Their presence in a funerary context, therefore, is not necessarily out of place. Their constant movement, their competitions, their victories and defeats can be read as a metaphor for the human condition. And their regenerative power can allude to the continuity of life after death. Everything passes, everything transforms, everything is renewed.
Perhaps the message is that love and desire survive death, ensuring the continuity of life.

-MUSIC-

When we arrive in the Roman world, Eros becomes Amor, or Cupid. And here too, the name is significant. Cupid derives from the Latin cupere, “to desire intensely.” Once again, then, we are in the realm of desire.
But in Roman culture, the image of Eros increasingly becomes that of the little winged god, companion of Venus. He is the mischievous child who shoots his arrows and makes human beings fall in love.

And from this emerges one of the most popular and enduring images in Western culture. Love as a force that strikes us. We do not necessarily choose to fall in love; rather, we are struck by it, victims of a god who is often capricious. Cupid’s arrow enters the body and completely changes our behavior. No one can escape…
Cupid as the embodiment of sensual desire, but also of the bond that binds two beings together irrevocably, is perhaps the theme that fascinated artists and patrons more than any other during the Renaissance. Love enters paintings, treatises, and poetry.

A work that perfectly combines antiquity and the Renaissance, painting and poetry, is Lorenzo Lotto’s Venus and Cupid, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Of Venetian origin, Lotto was forced to seek his fortune away from his native city, dominated by the overwhelming presence of his fellow painter Titian Vecellio. Despite his early difficulties, he managed to establish himself and find a loyal clientele in the Veneto and the Marche, who appreciated the originality of his work.
In the Metropolitan Museum painting, Cupid is portrayed beside his mother in an open meadow. A red cloth, tied to a tree, creates the illusion of an enclosed and intimate space, drawing the two figures toward the foreground.

The god of love has temporarily set aside his bow and quiver, resting against his left shoulder, and seems caught in a gesture that is hardly respectful toward his mother. He is, in fact, urinating on her through a wreath of myrtle, the flower sacred to Venus.
And yet the son’s mischievous behavior does not seem to trouble the goddess of love and beauty at all, as she turns toward the viewer with a gentle and indulgent expression. Venus even holds in her right hand the same myrtle garland that Cupid is using as his target, while with her left she touches one of her breasts, at the level of her heart.
The meaning of this unusual scene begins to become clearer when we look at the objects surrounding the two figures.

The roses, myrtle, ivy, and shell suspended above the goddess’s head are obvious attributes of Venus. But other details seem to refer to the marital context described in the poetry of ancient authors: the red cloth, the incense, as well as the rose petals and myrtle garlands, were used to decorate the bridal chamber.
The painting by Lotto can therefore be interpreted as a kind of nuptial chamber.
Venus, dressed as a bride, awaits the arrival of her husband. Her clothing seems to confirm this as well: the diadem, the pearl earring, the veil fastened by the transparent belt beneath her breasts. On closer inspection, the sensual goddess has such clearly defined features that they suggest the portrait of an actual Venetian lady.

But one question remains. What does Cupid’s gesture mean?
The act of urinating on his mother’s belly has been interpreted by scholars as a fertility blessing.
In my view, it could also be read as a ritual intended to protect Venus, the bride, from the dangers represented by the serpent and the staff we see in the foreground: symbols of the anxieties and threats capable of endangering marital harmony.

-MUSIC-

If Lorenzo Lotto associated Cupid with the desire that leads to union—in other words, conjugal love—Caravaggio’s Amor Vincit Omnia, Love Conquers All, strikes a very different tone. It is a work that has provoked discussion ever since it was first created, probably around 1601.
It is difficult to imagine an image more different from Lotto’s. Not so much because of its dimensions or orientation, but because of the overall tone of the work and its content.

Lorenzo Lotto was a skilled portraitist, and his Venus establishes a natural relationship with the viewer. But she cannot compete, in terms of immediacy, with Caravaggio’s Cupid, who seems almost to emerge from the dark surface of the canvas.
His mischievous smile, provocative pose, and that detail of the feathers of his left wing brushing against his thigh make him seem incredibly alive.
And this very effect had struck the patron as well. Vincenzo Giustiniani, following the suggestion of the artist Joachim von Sandrart, had decided to cover the painting with a green curtain, making the moment when it was unveiled to the viewer even more spectacular.

Giustiniani, one of Caravaggio’s most important collectors, was literally fascinated by the artist’s ability to render reality.
And for good reason.
Caravaggio’s Cupid is not the small, chubby putto we know from ancient reliefs and the Renaissance tradition. He is a young adolescent. His wings are dark. He is alone in the space. And he does not need his mother beside him to remind us who he is.
He is Love, in command.
And everything lying at his feet seems to have been defeated by his power: the musical instruments, the laurel wreath, the pen and book, the armor, the scepter and crown, all scattered across a purple cloak.

It does not matter how great our ambitions are. It does not matter how strong our virtue, our commitment, or our intelligence may be.
Love can make us lose our heads and completely change direction.
Looking at this Cupid, we can almost return to where we began. Remember Hesiod’s Eros? That primordial force that sets the cosmos in motion?

Perhaps, after all these centuries, something of that idea is still here. Because Caravaggio’s love is not innocent. It is not gentle. It is not decorative. It is a force that dominates. That conquers. That takes us by surprise.
That is why we continue to represent it. We need to give it a body because it is difficult to give a face to something that, deep down, we cannot control.

We transformed Eros into a god. Then into a winged youth. Then into a child. We multiplied him into hundreds of little Cupids. We brought him into marriages, myths, gardens, and bedrooms. We gave him a bow and arrows. We gave him a smile. We gave him a body.
But in reality, after more than two thousand years, Eros continues to be what he was at the beginning.
A force that sets us in motion.
And for this reason, in the end, none of us can ever truly escape him.

READ THE ARTICLE IN ITALIAN

Artworks: Il pittore delle sirene, Stamnos a figure rosse, 480-470 a.C., British Museum, Londra; Sarcofago con Eroti atleti, 140-150 d.C. Uffizi, Firenze; Lorenzo Lotto, Venere e Cupido, 1530 ca., olio su tela, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Caravaggio, Amore Vincitore, 1601 circa, olio su tela, Gemäldegalerie, Berlino.

Music: Charles Chaitman