Sleeping Cupid, oil on canvas, late 17th century, Caravaggio-style painter from northern Italy
Sleeping Cupid, oil on canvas, late 17th century, Caravaggio-style painter from northern Italy
Sleeping Cupid , oil on canvas, late 17th century, Caravaggio-style painter from northern Italy.
Measurements: 90 x 74
The painting we present is a precious testimony to the reception of Caravaggism in northern Italy at the end of the 17th century, but, above all, to the metamorphosis of a theme, that of Eros/ Cupid, which, depending on the era , has been interpreted in various ways on the basis of the cultural and, above all, moralistic demands of the moment.
Directly inspired by the famous Caravaggio prototype of the Sleeping Cupid (a work datable between 1608 and 1609, preserved in the Palatina Gallery in Florence), a subject begun and completed in Malta on commission by Francesco dell'Antella, administrator of the Grand Knight of the Order of Malta, our painting mirrors the Counter-Reformation instances through the peculiar representation of Cupid immortalised in the act of sleeping.
The extreme realism, alien to any oleographic virtuosity, harks back to the Caravaggio prototype, repeating, here too, the non-idealized, hyper-realistic representation of a Cupid on the verge of childhood obesity, almost ready to snore, in stark contrast to the sensual and pagan-like beauty of the subject of the same Caravaggio's “Amor vincit omnia”, created for the Marquis Giustiniani and now preserved in Berlin (Gem äldegalerie ).
However, the formal instance of representation refers back above all to the Caravaggesque prototype of the Palatine Gallery: if for the Sleeping Cupid we have evoked the moralising instances of the Counter-Reformation, it is first of all because, precisely in the general climate of renewed morally committed and dogmatically combative Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, a pagan subject, Cupid, is appropriated with a precise didactic intent in the sense that the pagan image of Sleeping Cupid conveys the moral message of moderation of passions, where the control of passions is inserted in the desired opposition between amor (personified by Eros) and voluptas.
The sleep of Love is the moment in which, as Calvesi has rightly pointed out (Reality in Caravaggio, 1940), Eros/Cupid is tamed, tempered, mitigated by the temperance symbolised by sleep in which one witnesses the numbing of passions and carnal love.
This subject, in its specific moralising function, was widely diffused among the Caravaggio-style painters, not only in the north of Italy, but also in the south (a good example is the Sleeping Cupid by the Neapolitan Battistello Carracciolo (Galleria Regionale di Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo ), a subject whose charm, however, could not escape even Reni in his classicist phase ( the work, from around 1620, is known in its formulation through numerous workshop copies: Banca Popolare dell'Emilia Romagna, La Collezione di Dipinti Antichi, edited by D. Benati and C. Peruzzi, Milan 2006 ).
As Macione has rightly pointed out (see Stefania Macione, Sleeping Love in Caravaggio's Painting, 2004), the followers of the Lombard master will have the merit of inserting the iconography of Sleeping Love into the new moralising contexts of the Counter-Reformation, thus enriching a basically pagan subject with not insignificant Christian implications.
The operation carried out by the Caravaggio followers, including our painter, in the seventeenth-century depiction of the sleeping Cupid, in fact represents the point of arrival, a significant stage in a process of iconographic re-examination and reinterpretation of a subject, Cupid/Eros who, born in the classical world, where he had enjoyed considerable success, stigmatized mostly negatively in the Middle Ages, because he was considered essentially outside the moralistic canons characterizing medieval culture , was soon depicted as "blind and blindfolded Love", characteristics aimed at highlighting the negative aspects of divinity with the consequent transition, in the humanistic and Renaissance era, from the motif of "blinding" to that of "unblinding".
This “unblinding” implies (see Panofsky, Studies in iconology. Humanistic themes in Renaissance art, 1975) the passage from a negative consideration of Love to a renewed positive conception.
However, before restoring God's sight, we also witness a positive re-evaluation of his blindness (see Wind, Mysteries of the Pagans in the Renaissance, 1975): starting from the fifteenth century, Blind Love was in fact considered the supreme form of Neoplatonic love.
Thus , Cupid, having subsequently regained his sight as well as his positive value, experienced a further iconographic diffusion starting from the Renaissance: the Sleeping Love canonized by the Counter-Reformation.
In this regard, for the sake of completeness, it is worth remembering how the Caravaggio prototype of our and other paintings of this kind (the Sleeping Cupid in the Palatine Gallery in Florence) also constitutes a significant testimony of the Christian rediscovery of Michelangelo's classicism: in fact, for this version, Caravaggio was inspired by a sculpture of the same name by Michelangelo, which has since been lost and was even mistaken for an ancient one.
Cupid thus also becomes a subject of primary importance for all artists from the sixteenth century onwards, to measure themselves against the great masters of the past by investing the pagan model with new meanings in the name of a multifaceted transformation, of which our painting , not only for its intrinsic pictorial quality, obtained in a personal measured reinterpretation of chiaroscuro, but also for its added documentary value, represents an excellent testimony, capable of draining the interest of collectors and interior designers.
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