Caravaggio’s Cupid (talk)

Excellent online lecture from ARTscapades introducing the exhibition of Caravaggio’s “Cupid” from Berlin and putting the work into context.

Richard Stemp elaborated on this two room exhibition which I went to a couple of days after the talk so look for a blog of the show next. His first talk looked at the first room recreating Vincenzo Giustiniani’s sculpture collection. He used this to explain where Caravaggio was in his career at this point and his relationship with various patrons including the Guistiniani brothers. He explained how the engravings reproduced around the walls were from the catalogue of the collection by the curator of the collection, Joachim van Sandrart in the 1630s.

In the second half he moved into the other room which holds the Cupid himself and two sculptures. He put forward some interesting ideas of other works of art which influenced the Cupid and went into some detail about the meaning of the work and precedents for it.  He also discussed how, although it is quite shocking to our eyes, it may not have seemed to viewers at the time. He also discussed the model, Cecco, and whether he was Caravaggio’s lover as was possibly implied in the 1650s by a British viewer who said he was a “boy or servant who laid with him”. Lover or did people share beds with their servants?