Cupid Chastised

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Cupid Chastised depicts a moment of high drama: Mars, the god of war, violently whips the young boy, Cupid, as punishment for embroiling the god in an affair with the boy’s mother, Venus, the goddess of love. Venus tries in vain to stop the beating. Surrounded by darkness, the three figures are boldly illuminated from the left, intensifying the composition’s dynamism and impact. The physicality of the figures conveys the violent discord of the scene: the crouching, wide-eyed Venus; the furious, muscular Mars; and Cupid, whose naked flesh and recumbent position render him particularly vulnerable. On one level a tale of interpersonal conflict, the story also symbolizes the eternal conflict between love and war. Bartolomeo Manfredi chose to depict ordinary individuals in scenes from the Bible and Greek and Roman mythology. In so doing, he was following the example of the revolutionary early seventeenth-century artist Caravaggio, who had demonstrated to an entire generation of European artists that such lofty themes could be transformed into events experienced by ordinary people. Manfredi began his career as an artist in Rome by producing copies of Caravaggio’s works, including a painting (

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