Amor Vincit Omnia (Caravaggio)
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Amor Vincit Omnia | |
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Italian: Amor vincitore | |
Artist | Caravaggio |
Year | 1601–1602 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 156 cm × 113 cm (61 in × 44 in) |
Location | Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
Amor Vincit Omnia ("Love Conquers All") in Latin, known in English by a variety of names including Amor Victorious, Victorious Cupid, Love Triumphant, Love Victorious, or Earthly Love is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio.
Amor Vincit Omnia shows
Background
The subject of Cupid was common for the age.
The painter Orazio Gentileschi lent Caravaggio the wings as props to be used in the painting, and this allows fairly precise dating of 1602–03. It was an immediate success in the circles of Rome's intellectual and cultural elite. A poet immediately wrote three madrigals about it, and another wrote a Latin epigram in which it was first coupled with the Virgilian phrase Omnia Vincit Amor, although this did not become its title until the critic Giovanni Pietro Bellori wrote his life of Caravaggio in 1672.[4]
Inevitably, much scholarly and non-scholarly ink has been spilled over the alleged eroticism of the painting.[5]
In 1602, shortly after Amor Vincit was completed, Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, Vincenzo's brother and collaborator in the creation of the Giustiniani collection of contemporary art commissioned a painting from the noted artist Giovanni Baglione. Baglione's Divine Love Conquering Earthly Love showed Divine Love separating a juvenile Cupid on the ground in the lower right corner (profane love) from a Lucifer in the left corner. Its style was thoroughly derivative of Caravaggio (who had recently emerged as a rival for Church commissions) and a clear challenge to the recent Amor, and the younger painter bitterly protested at what he saw as plagiarism. Taunted by one of Caravaggio's friends, Baglione responded with a second version, in which the devil was given Caravaggio's face. Thus began a long and vicious quarrel which was to have unforeseeable ramifications for Caravaggio decades after his death when the unforgiving Baglione became his first biographer.
Sandrart described Amor as "A life-size Cupid after a boy of about twelve...[who] has large brown eagle's wings, drawn so correctly and with such strong coloring, clarity and relief that it all comes to life."
The picture remained in the Giustiniani collection until 1812, when it was purchased by the art dealer Féréol Bonnemaison, and sold to Frederick William III of Prussia in 1815 for the Berlin Museums.[8] It remains part of the collection of the Berlin State Museums today, and is displayed in the Gemäldegalerie.[9]
See also
- Master of the Gamblers, for a similar painting entitled Omnia Vincit Amor ("Victorious Cupid")
- List of paintings by Caravaggio
Notes
- ^ Puglisi, Caravaggio, pp. 201–202
- ^ "The History of Cupid in Art: How the God of Love Has Inspired Artists for Centuries". 14 February 2018.
- ^ "The Genius of Victory", Wikipedia, 2023-07-08, retrieved 2024-03-19
- ^ "Masterpiece Story: Caravaggio, Amor Vincit Omnia". 7 June 2020.
- ^ "Seduction in the Male Form as Pathway to the Divine | the Classic Journal".
- ^ Quoted in Peter Robb, M, p. 194
- ^ Quoted in Peter Robb, M, p. 195.
- ISBN 0870993801.
- ^ "Amor als Sieger". Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
Further reading
- Jürgen Müller, Der Maler als Pasquino – Spott, Kritik und Subversion. Eine neue Deutung von Caravaggios Amor vincitore, in: Uwe Israel, Marius Kraus u. Ludovica Sasso (Eds.): Agonale Invektivität: Konstellationen und Dynamiken der Herabsetzung im italienischen und deutschen Humanismus, Heidelberg 2021 (Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Beihefte, Band 17), S. 143–190. [1]
References
- Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio, Phaidon, London/New York, 1998. ISBN 0-7148-3966-3
- ISBN 1-876631-79-1
External links
- Media related to Amor Victorious by Caravaggio at Wikimedia Commons