Cupid
Cupid | |
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God of desire, erotic love, attraction, and affection | |
Symbol | Bow and arrow |
Mount | Dolphin |
Personal information | |
Parents | Mars and Venus |
Consort | Psyche |
Children | Voluptas |
Equivalents | |
Greek equivalent | Eros |
Hinduism equivalent | Kamadeva |
Part of a series on |
Love |
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In
In art, Cupid often appears in multiples as the Amores
Cupid continued to be a popular figure in the
Etymology
The name Cupīdō ('passionate desire') is a derivative of Latin cupiō, cupĕre ('to desire'), itself from Proto-Italic *kup-i-, which may reflect *kup-ei- ('to desire'; cf. Umbrian cupras, South Picene kuprí). The latter ultimately stems from the Proto-Indo-European verbal stem *kup-(e)i- ('to tremble, desire'; cf. Old Irish accobor 'desire', Sanskrit prá-kupita- 'trembling, quaking', Old Church Slavonic kypĕti 'to simmer, boil').[3]
Origins and birth
The Romans
At the same time, the Eros who was pictured as a boy or slim youth was regarded as the child of a divine couple, the identity of whom varied by source. The influential Renaissance mythographer
In
In the later classical tradition, Cupid is most often regarded as the son of Venus and Mars, whose love affair represented an allegory of Love and War.[14] The duality between the primordial and the sexually conceived Eros accommodated philosophical concepts of Heavenly and Earthly Love even in the Christian era.[15]
Attributes and themes
Cupid is winged, allegedly because lovers are flighty and likely to change their minds, and boyish because love is irrational. His symbols are the arrow and torch, "because love wounds and inflames the heart". These attributes and their interpretation were established by late antiquity, as summarized by
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.[18]
In
Particularly in ancient Roman art, cupids may also carry or be surrounded by fruits, animals, or attributes of the Seasons or the wine-god Dionysus, symbolizing the earth's generative capacity.[20]
Having all these associations, Cupid is considered to share parallels with the Hindu god Kama.[21]
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Edme Bouchardon, Cupid, 1744, National Gallery of Art
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Cupid sculpture by Bertel Thorvaldsen
Cupid's arrows
Cupid carries two kinds of arrows, or darts, one with a sharp golden point, and the other with a blunt tip of lead. A person wounded by the golden arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire, but the one struck by the lead feels aversion and desires only to flee. The use of these arrows is described by the
A variation is found in The Kingis Quair, a 15th-century poem attributed to James I of Scotland, in which Cupid has three arrows: gold, for a gentle "smiting" that is easily cured; the more compelling silver; and steel, for a love-wound that never heals.[24]
Cupid and the bees
In the tale of Cupid the honey thief, the child-god is stung by bees when he steals honey from their hive. He cries and runs to his mother Venus,[25] complaining that so small a creature should not cause such painful wounds. Venus laughs, and points out the poetic justice: he too is small, and yet delivers the sting of love.
The story was first told about Eros in the
Through this sting was Amor made wiser.
The untiring deceiver
concocted another battle-plan:
he lurked beneath the carnations and roses
and when a maiden came to pick them,
he flew out as a bee and stung her.[30]
The image of Cupid as a bee is part of a complex tradition of poetic imagery involving the flower of youth, the sting of love as a deflowering, and honey as a secretion of love.[31]
Cupid and dolphins
In both ancient and later art, Cupid is often shown riding a
In other contexts, Cupid with a dolphin recurs as a playful motif, as in garden statuary at
Dolphins were often portrayed in antiquity as friendly to humans, and the dolphin itself could represent affection.
In erotic scenes from mythology, Cupid riding the dolphin may convey how swiftly love moves,
Demon of fornication
To adapt myths for Christian use, medieval mythographers interpreted them morally. In this view, Cupid is seen as a "demon of
Sleeping Cupid
Cupid sleeping became a symbol of absent or languishing love in Renaissance poetry and art, including a
Michelangelo's work was important in establishing the reputation of the young artist, who was only twenty at the time. At the request of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, his patron, he increased its value by deliberately making it look "antique",[45] thus creating "his most notorious fake".[46] After the deception was acknowledged, the Cupid Sleeping was displayed as evidence of his virtuosity alongside an ancient marble, attributed to Praxiteles, of Cupid asleep on a lion skin.[47]
In the poetry of
Love Conquers All
Earlier in his career, Caravaggio had challenged contemporary sensibilities with his "sexually provocative and anti-intellectual" Victorious Love, also known as Love Conquers All (Amor Vincit Omnia), in which a brazenly naked Cupid tramples on emblems of culture and erudition representing music, architecture, warfare, and scholarship.[50]
The motto comes from the
Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori.
Love conquers all, and so let us surrender ourselves to Love.[52]
The theme was also expressed as the triumph of Cupid, as in the Triumphs of Petrarch.[53]
Roman Cupid
The ancient Roman Cupid was a god who embodied desire, but he had no
Cupid became more common in
As a winged figure, Cupido shared some characteristics with the
Is it the gods who put passion in men's mind, Euryalus, or does each person's fierce desire (cupido) become his own God?[68]
In Lucretius' physics of sex, cupido can represent human lust and an animal instinct to mate, but also the impulse of atoms to bond and form matter.[69] An association of sex and violence is found in the erotic fascination for gladiators, who often had sexualized names such as Cupido.[70]
Cupid was the enemy of chastity, and the poet Ovid opposes him to Diana, the virgin goddess of the hunt who likewise carries a bow but who hates Cupid's passion-provoking arrows.[71] Cupid is also at odds with Apollo, the archer-brother of Diana and patron of poetic inspiration whose love affairs almost always end disastrously. Ovid jokingly blames Cupid for causing him to write love poetry instead of the more respectable epic.[72]
Cupid and Psyche
The story of Cupid and Psyche appears in Greek art as early as the 4th century BC, but the most extended literary source of the tale is the Latin novel Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass, by Apuleius (2nd century AD). It concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche ("Soul" or "Breath of Life") and Cupid, and their ultimate union in marriage.
The fame of Psyche's beauty threatens to eclipse that of Venus herself, and the love goddess sends Cupid to work her revenge. Cupid, however, becomes enamored of Psyche, and arranges for her to be taken to his palace. He visits her by night, warning her not to try to look upon him. Psyche's envious sisters convince her that her lover must be a hideous monster, and she finally introduces a lamp into their chamber to see him. Startled by his beauty, she drips hot oil from the lamp and wakes him. He abandons her. She wanders the earth looking for him, and finally submits to the service of Venus, who tortures her. The goddess then sends Psyche on a series of quests. Each time she despairs, and each time she is given divine aid. On her final task, she is to retrieve a dose of Proserpina's beauty from the underworld. She succeeds, but on the way back can not resist opening the box in the hope of benefitting from it herself, whereupon she falls into a torpid sleep. Cupid finds her in this state, and revives her by returning the sleep to the box. Cupid grants her immortality so the couple can be wed as equals.
The story's
"La Belle et la Bête" ("The Beauty and the Beast") was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, and then abridged by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1740;[76] in 1991 it inspired the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. It has been said that Gabrielle was inspired[77][78] by the tale Cupid and Psyche.[79]
Depictions
On gems and other surviving pieces, Cupid is usually shown amusing himself with adult play, sometimes driving a hoop, throwing darts, catching a butterfly, or flirting with a nymph. He is often depicted with his mother (in graphic arts, this is nearly always Venus), playing a horn. In other images, his mother is depicted scolding or even spanking him due to his mischievous nature. He is also shown wearing a helmet and carrying a buckler, perhaps in reference to Virgil's Omnia vincit amor or as political satire on wars for love, or love as war. Traditionally, Cupid was portrayed nude in the style of Classical art, but more modern depictions show him wearing a diaper, sash, and/or wings.
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A red-figure plate with Eros as a youth making an offering (c. 340–320 BC). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
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Lucas Cranach the Elder – Venus with Cupid Stealing Honey
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Venus and Amor by Frans Floris, Hallwyl Museum
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Cupid the Honey Thief (1514) by Dürer
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Venus, Mars and Cupido by Joachim Wtewael, around 1610
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Cupid breaking his bow (c. 1635) byJean Ducamps
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Cupid in a Tree (1795/1805) by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier
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Omnia Vincit Amor (1809) by Benjamin West
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Cupid on aWilliam Adolphe Bouguereau
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A Valentine greeting card (1909)
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Love who has just stolen a rose, circa 1796, by Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet
See also
- Apollo and Daphne
- Putto, often conflated with a Cherub
- Cupid's bow
- Love dart
References
- ^ Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia, The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215.
- ^ This introduction is based on the entry on "Cupid" in The Classical Tradition, edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis (Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 244–246.
- ^ de Vaan 2008, p. 155.
- ^ Leonard Muellner, The Anger of Achilles: Mễnis in Greek Epic (Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 57–58; Jean-Pierre Vernant, "One ... Two ... Three: Erōs," in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 467.
- ^ Vernant, "One ... Two ... Three: Erōs," p. 465ff.
- ^ Sappho, fragment 31.
- Simonides, fragment 54.
- FGrH1A 3 frg. 6C.
- ^ Alcaeus, fragment 13. Citations of ancient sources from Conti given by John Mulryan and Steven Brown, Natale Conti's Mythologiae Books I–V (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), vol. 1, p. 332.
- ^ Natale Conti, Mythologiae 4.14.
- ^ Seneca, Octavia 560.
- ^ Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3.59–60.
- ^ M.T. Jones-Davies and Ton Hoenselaars, introduction to Masque of Cupids, edited and annotated by John Jowett, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 1031.
- ^ a b "Cupid," The Classical Tradition, p. 244.
- ^ Entry on "Cupid," The Classical Tradition, p. 244.
- ^ Isidore, Etymologies 8.11.80.
- ^ Geoffrey Miles, Classical Mythology in English Literature: A Critical Anthology (Routledge, 1999), p. 24.
- ^ Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream 1.1.234–239.
- ^ Jennifer Speake and Thomas G. Bergin, entry on "Cupid," Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation (Market House Books, rev. ed. 2004), p. 129.
- ^ Jean Sorabella, "A Roman Sarcophagus and Its Patron," Metropolitan Museum Journal 36 (2001), p. 75.
- ISBN 9788184752779. Entry: "Kama"
- ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.463–473.
- ^ Book III, Ovid's Metamorphoses
- Walter W. Skeat, Chaucerian and Other Pieces (Oxford University Press, 1897, 1935), sup. vol., note 1315, p. 551.
- ^ Susan Youens, Hugo Wolf and His Mörike Songs (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 118: "When he runs crying to his mother Venus".
- ^ Theocritus, Idyll 19. It also appears in Anacreontic poetry.
- ^ Jane Kingsley-Smith, Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 12.
- ^ Charles Sterling et al., Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Paintings in the Robert Lehman Collection: France, Central Europe, The Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), pp. 43–44.
- ^ Youens, Hugo Wolf and His Mörike Songs, p. 119.
- ^ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Die Biene; Youens, Hugo Wolf and His Mörike Songs, p. 119.
- ^ Youens, Hugo Wolf and His Mörike Songs, pp. 117–120.
- ^ Janet Huskinson, Roman Children's Sarcophagi: Their Decoration and Its Social Significance (Oxford University Press, 1996), passim; Joan P. Alcock, "Pisces in Britannia: The Eating and Portrayal of Fish in Roman Britain," in Fish: Food from the Waters. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1997 (Prospect Books, 1998), p. 25.
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- ^ Anthony King, "Mammals: Evidence from Wall Paintings, Sculpture, Mosaics, Faunal Remains, and Ancient Literary Sources," in The Natural History of Pompeii (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 419–420.
- ^ "Archaeological News," American Journal of Archaeology 11.2 (1896), p. 304.
- ^ Pliny, Natural History 9.8.24; Alcock, "Pisces in Britannia," p. 25.
- ^ Marietta Cambareri and Peter Fusco, catalogue description for a Venus and Cupid, Italian and Spanish Sculpture: Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection (Getty Publications, 2002), p. 62.
- ^ Thomas Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle's Poetics And the Rise of the Modern Artist (Yale University Press, 2005), p. 174.
- ^ Daemon fornicationis in Isidore of Seville, moechiae daemon in Theodulf of Orleans; Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177 (University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 129ff., especially p. 138.
- Theodulf of Orleans, De libris, carmen 45; Chance, Medieval Mythography, p. 133.
- Second Vatican Mythographer (II 46/35) and Remigius of Auxerre, Commentary on Martianus Capella8.22.
- ^ "Cupid," The Classical Tradition, p. 245; Stefania Macioe, "Caravaggio and the Role of Classical Models," in The Rediscovery of Antiquity: The Role of the Artist (Collegium Hyperboreum, 2003), pp. 437–438.
- ^ Rona Goffen, Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (Yale University Press, 2002, 2004), p. 95.
- Cnidian Venus both in its nobility and in the wrong it had endured, as a certain main from Rhodeshad fallen in love with it and left a visible trace of his love (vestigium amoris); Goffen, Renaissance Rivals, p. 96.
- ^ Deborah Parker, Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 11.
- ^ Goffen, Renaissance Rivals, p. 95.
- ^ Estelle Lingo, François Duquesnoy and the Greek Ideal (Yale University Press, 2007), p. 61.
- ^ John L. Varriano, Caravaggio (Penn State Press, 2006), pp. 57, 130.
- ^ Macioe, "Caravaggio and the Role of Classical Models," p. 436–438.
- ^ Varriano, Caravaggio, pp. 22, 123.
- ^ David R. Slavitt, Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971, 1990), p. xvii.
- Vergil, Eclogues 10.69.
- ^ Aldo S. Bernardo, Petrarch, Laura, and the Triumphs (State University of New York, 1974), p. 102ff.; Varriano, Caravaggio, p. 123.
- ^ Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann, "Religion in the House," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 199.
- ^ John R. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 315 (University of California Press, 2003), p. 89.
- ^ Mikalson, Jon D. (2015). The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year. Princeton University Press. p. 186. ISBN 9781400870325.
- ^ Cicero, Against Verres 4.2–4; David L. Balch, "From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs: From Houses of the Living to Houses for the Dead. Iconography and Religion in Transition," in Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context. Studies of Roman (De Gruyter, 2008), p. 281; Anna Clark, Divine Qualities: Cult and Community in Republican Rome (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 177.
- ^ Leonard A. Curchin, "Personal Wealth in Roman Spain," Historia 32.2 (1983), p. 230.
- ^ Charles Brian Rose, "The Parthians in Augustan Rome," American Journal of Archaeology 109.1 (2005), pp. 27–28
- ^ Suetonius, Caligula 7; Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001; originally published in French 1998), p. 18.
- ^ Susann S. Lusnia, "Urban Planning and Sculptural Display in Severan Rome: Reconstructing the Septizodium and Its Role in Dynastic Politics," American Journal of Archaeology 108.4 (2004), p. 530.
- ^ J. C. McKeow, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 210.
- ^ Janet Huskinson, Roman Children's Sarcophagi: Their Decoration and Its Social Significance (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 41ff.
- ^ Clark, Divine Qualities, p. 199; Huskinson, Roman Children's Sarcophagi, passim.
- ^ J. Rufus Fears, "The Theology of Victory at Rome: Approaches and Problem," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 791, and in the same volume, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology," p. 881.
- common nouns were not distinguished by capitalization, and there was no sharp line between an abstraction such as cupido and its divine personification Cupido; J. Rufus Fears, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 849, note 69.
- ^ William V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327-70 B.C. (Oxford University Press, 1979, 1985), pp. 17–18; Sviatoslav Dmitrie, The Greek Slogan of Freedom and Early Roman Politics in Greece (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 372; Philip Hardie, Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 33, 172, 234, 275, 333ff.
- ^ As quoted by David Armstrong, Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans (University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 181; Aeneid 9.184–184: dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, / Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?
- ^ Diskin Clay, "De Rerum Natura: Greek Physis and Epicurean Physiologia (Lucretius 1.1–148)," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 100 (1969), p. 37.
- ^ H.S. Versnel, "A Parody on Hymns in Martial V.24 and Some Trinitarian Problems," Mnemosyne 27.4 (1974), p. 368.
- ^ Tela Cupidinis odit: Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.261; C.M.C. Green, "Terms of Venery: Ars Amatoria I," Transactions of the American Philological Association 126 (1996), pp. 242, 245.
- ^ Rebecca Armstrong, "Retiring Apollo: Ovid on the Politics and Poetics of Self-Sufficiency," Classical Quarterly 54.2 (2004) 528–550.
- ^ Stephen Harrison, entry on "Cupid," The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 338.
- ^ Hendrik Wagenvoort, "Cupid and Psyche," reprinted in Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Brill, 1980), pp. 84–92.
- ^ Harrison, "Cupid and Psyche," in Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 339.
- ^ "Beauty and the Beast" (PDF). humanitiesresource.com. 2011.
- ^ Ness, Mari (January 2016). "Marriage Can Be Monstrous, or Wondrous: The Origins of "Beauty and the Beast"". Tor Publishing.
- JSTOR 41389987.
- ^ Longman, Allyn and Bacon (2003). "Allyn and Bacon Anthology of Traditional Literature: Cupid and Psyche" (PDF). auburn.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-01-17. Retrieved 2018-09-16.
- ^ Edward Morris, Public Art Collections in North-West England: A History and Guide (Liverpool University Press), 2001, p. 19
Bibliography
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- Fabio Silva Vallejo, Mitos y leyendas del mundo (Spanish), 2004 Panamericana Editorial. ISBN 9789583015762