Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Amor Vincit Omnia (Amor Victorious) (1602), Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

The subject was common in the High Renaissance and Mannerist periods and, indeed, Caravaggio’s model is common, a genre type. Caravaggio as he painted directly from the model did not idealize his Amor, but portrayed his ruddy cheeks, uneven teeth, touseled hair and the wings of a predator, an eagle! The symbols which abound ’bout the adolescent Amor are references to a patron: Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani. The arrows that the Amor holds in his right hand are later encountered in the dart of the Angel in Bernini’s Ecstacy of St. Theresa. In the face of this Amor, one sees a gleeful challenge. But, to what?