Those familiar with Caravaggio’s oeuvre will perhaps recognise the Cupid who stares puckishly back at them in Victorious Cupid, or Amor Vincit Omnia; he is probably Cecco, a model who appears in several other Caravaggio paintings, and was reputed to be his shockingly young lover. Here he stands, frontally nude, leg lifted playfully outwards, and life-sized. He seems to be laughing, toying with the viewer: in his right hand he holds two arrows, one red and one black – one for love, one for indifference – as though deciding which arrow he will choose to shoot at us. All around are the ephemera of human achievements which, like trophies, have fallen at the feet of Love. For, the painting reminds us, Love conquers all, viewers included. Scraps of a musical score and instruments, a compass and set square, a pen and manuscript, a laurel wreath, the globe itself – of which there is a glimpse – are all vanquished. Yet one thing is not among the other spoils: the symbols of painting itself. Love, it transpires, conquers almost all, but is itself conquered by this most superior of arts – and, indeed, by this most superior of artists.
The exhibition ‘Caravaggio’s Cupid’ at the Wallace Collection is built around this Victorious Cupid, which has been lent by the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. And just as it is the centrepiece here, so it was the jewel of the collection of the patron for whom Caravaggio painted it in 1601–02: the Roman banker and intellectual Vincenzo Giustiniani. Works by Titian, Raphael, Bellini, Giorgione covered the walls of his palazzo, and a purpose-built sculpture gallery housed ancient masterpieces. But as well as collecting work by masters of the previous century, Giustiniani was keen to collect contemporary artists and ended up owning at least 13 paintings by Caravaggio. Victorious Cupid was one of the first of these commissions, made when the artist was at the height of his career.
It is fitting that this exhibition takes place at the Wallace Collection, itself one of the great English collections. For this exhibition is primarily concerned with the Cupid as part of a collection, and it gives a suggestion of its original setting. The first room is laid out like the sculpture gallery of the Palazzo Giustiniani, and replicates the view from two windows looking out on to the street that 17th-century visitors to the gallery would have seen. There you find the shop (owned by a dealer named Costantino Spata) from which Caravaggio’s early works were sold, and the San Luigi dei Francesi church, for which he was commissioned to paint scenes from the life of Saint Matthew. In the centre of the room stands a 2nd-century statue of Aphrodite that was in Giustiniani’s possession. Around it the walls are lined with images of other sculptures that graced the original space, including four Cupids, and we are invited to make connections between Caravaggio’s ‘boy’ and these works.
Though he is actively engaging in paragone (the contest between the arts of painting and sculpture), for Caravaggio it is no contest at all. But while he was open about his disdain for anything that wasn’t made directly from life, he has clearly drawn on what he found in Giustiniani’s sculpture gallery. This is made more explicit in the next room, where a 1st-century statue of Apollo is exhibited close to Victorious Cupid, and we are invited to look from one to the other. We can see that the posture of the torso and slightly turned-out leg have made their way into Caravaggio’s masterpiece. This is what makes Cupid so compelling: he is a real boy, exuding individuality, yet with a nod to the perfection of a classical sculpture.
For all the naturalism of the work, it is also a piece of theatre – for example, the eagle wings on Cupid’s back, so skilfully painted, playfully brushing against his thigh, were a stage prop, borrowed from Caravaggio’s friend and fellow artist, Orazio Gentileschi. Even the presentation of the painting when it was hung in the gallery of the Palazzo was a theatrical event: concealed behind a green curtain which could be dramatically opened to reveal the risqué work behind. There is a nod to this in the exhibition, with a green velvet curtain hanging nearby, drawn aside to reveal the painting to us. As a result, this erotically charged boy, stepping off a crumpled bedsheet, is every bit as provocative now as when he was first painted.
This is a beautiful concept for an exhibition, and where it could be gimmicky it is well executed. We see Caravaggio’s painting in a context of his patrons, rivals, models; we learn about the way tastes were shaped in their time and think about how these tastes speak to us now. Over recent years questions have circulated around rethinking what an exhibition is or ought to be and how works should be presented and represented, challenging tradition, often bringing together multimedia objects in dialogue. Several exhibitions over the last decade have sought, in some part, to reconstruct collections, and ‘Caravaggio’s Cupid’ does this playfully, turning a spotlight display into a kind of multimedia installation that draws several elements together – prints, maps, sculptures, reproductions – in an intellectually and aesthetically convincing manner. It helps that the exhibition is taking place in a space where we’re encouraged to think of the collector as an active participant in the production and survival of the works we see.
‘Caravaggio’s Cupid’ is at the Wallace Collection, London, until 12 April.
