Amor Vincit Omnia (meaning "Love Conquers All", 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 Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), currently in the Gemäldegalerie (Berlin). Download high resolution version (871x1190, 149 KB) The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain in the United States and in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. ... Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. ... Events February 8 - Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, rebels against Elizabeth I of England - revolt is quickly crushed February 25 - Robert Devereux beheaded Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrives in China Bad harvest in Russia due to rainy summer Dutch troops drive Portuguese from Málaga Battle of Kinsale, Ireland Births... This page is about the year. ... Mona Lisa, Oil on wood panel painting by Leonardo da Vinci. ... The Gemäldegalerie is one of the worlds leading collections of European art from the 13th to 18th century. ... Location of Berlin within Germany / EU Coordinates Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) Administration Country NUTS Region DE3 City subdivisions 12 boroughs Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) Governing parties SPD / Left. ... Adoration, by Peter Paul Rubens. ... The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. ... Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. ... The Gemäldegalerie is one of the worlds leading collections of European art from the 13th to 18th century. ...

Caravaggio created the painting between 1601 and 1603 for Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, one of the wealthiest men in Rome. At the time Caravaggio was increasingly devoting his attention to Church commissions, and this was one of the last of his secular works for private patrons. Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (13 September 1564 - 27 December 1637) was an aristocratic Italian banker, art collector and intellectual of the late 16th/early 17th centuries, known today largely for the Giustiniani art collection and for his patronage of the artist Caravaggio. ...

Amor Vincit Omnia shows Amor, the Roman Cupid, wearing dark eagle wings, half-sitting on or perhaps climbing down from what appears to be a table. Scattered around are the emblems of all human endeavours – violin and lute, armour, coronet, square and compasses, pen and manuscript, bay leaves, an astral globe, tangled and trampled under Cupid’s foot. The painting illustrates the line from Virgil's Eclogues X.69, Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori. "Love conquers all; let us all yield to love!" A musical manuscript on the floor shows a large ‘V’. It has therefore been suggested also that the picture is a coded reference to the attainments of Vincenzo Giustiniani: his family was the Genoese rulers of Chios until the island's capture by the Turks) in 1622, hence the coronet; while the cultivated Marchese wrote on music and painting (pen, manuscript and musical instruments), was constructing an imposing new palazzo (geometrical instruments), studied astronomy (astral sphere), and was praised for his military prowess (armour). The symbology thus holds the possible reading: Vincenzo Conquers All. Certainly Giustiniani is said to have prized it above all other works in his collection.^[1] Look up Amor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A head of Minerva found in the ruins of the Roman baths in Bath Roman mythology, the mythological beliefs of the people of Ancient Rome, can be considered as having two parts. ... It has been suggested that Cupid (holiday character) be merged into this article or section. ... Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or Vergil, was a classical Roman poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the substantially completed Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that became... The Eclogues is one of three major works by the Latin poet Virgil. ... Alternate uses, see Genoa (disambiguation). ... Chios (Greek: , alternative transliterations Khios and Hios, see also List of traditional Greek place names; Ottoman Turkish: صاقيز Sakız; Genoese: Scio) is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea five miles off the Turkish coasts. ... For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ... For building painting, see painter and decorator. ... A giant Hubble mosaic of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant Astronomy is the science of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the Earths atmosphere (such as auroras and cosmic background radiation). ...

The subject was a common one for the age. Caravaggio’s treatment is remarkable for the realism of his Cupid – where other depictions, such as a contemporary Sleeping Cupid by Battistello Caracciolo (Naples 1578-1630), show an idealised, almost generic, beautiful boy, Caravaggio’s Cupid is highly individual, charming but not at all beautiful, all crooked teeth and crooked grin: one feels that one would recognise him in the street. The shock of the Caravaggio, quite apart from the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting and the photographic clarity, is the mingling of the allegorical and the real, this sense it gives of a child who is having a thoroughly good time dressing up in stage-prop wings with a bunch of arrows and having his picture painted. Nevertheless, despite the clear indications of Caravaggio’s practice of painting direct from a live model, there is an undeniable resemblance to the pose of Michelangelo's Victory now in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and it is likely the artist had this in mind. Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, called Battistello, 1578 - 1635, was an Italian artist and important Neapolitan follower of Caravaggio. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Tenebrism. ... An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, other, and αγορευειν, agoreuein, to speak in public) is a figurative representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. ... Palazzo Vecchio The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence, Italy. ... Florence (Italian: ) is the capital city of the region of Tuscany, Italy. ...

The painter Orazio Gentileschi called the painting Earthly Love, and 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. Orazio Gentileschi was an Italian painter. ... A madrigal is a setting for 4–6 voices of a secular text, often in Italian. ... An epigram is a short poem with a clever twist at the end or a concise and witty statement. ... Giovanni Bellori was an important figure in the seventeenth century Roman artworld. ...

Inevitably, much scholarly and non-scholarly ink has been spilled over the alleged eroticism of the painting. Yet the homoerotic, not to say pederastic, content was perhaps not so apparent to Giustiniani’s generation as it has become today. Naked boys could be seen on any riverbank or seashore, and the eroticisation of children is very much a cultural artefact of the present-day rather than Caravaggio's. Certainly neither Giustiniani, who was not a homosexual, nor his visitors, appear to have been concerned by the question of modesty – or to have even raised it – and the story that the Marchese kept Amor hidden behind a curtain relates to his reported wish that it should be kept as a final pièce de résistance for visitors, to be seen only when the rest of the collection had been viewed – in other words, the curtain was to reveal the painting, not to hide it. (According to the historian Joachim von Sandrart, who catalogued the Giustiniani collection in the 1630s, the curtain was only installed at his urging at that time). The challenge is to see the Amor Vincit through 17th century eyes.^[2] Eroticism is an aesthetic focus on sexual desire, especially the feelings of anticipation of sexual activity. ... Homosexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by esthetic attraction, romantic love, or sexual desire exclusively for another of the same sex. ... Pederastic courtship scene Athenian black-figure amphora, 5th c. ... Since its coinage, the word homosexuality has acquired multiple meanings. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Pièce de résistance is a French term (circa 1839), translated into English literally as piece of resistance, referring to the best part or feature of something (as in a meal), a showpiece, or highlight. ...

Giovanni Baglione. Sacred Love Versus Profane Love. 1602-1603 Oil on canvas. 179 x 118 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

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 and Profane 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 the 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 unforseeable ramifications for Caravaggio decades after his death when the unforgiving Baglione became his first biographer. Image File history File links Baglione. ... Image File history File links Baglione. ... Sacred Love Versus Profane Love (1602-1603). ... This page is about the year. ... Year 1603 (MDCIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ... The Gemäldegalerie is one of the worlds leading collections of European art from the 13th to 18th century. ... Location of Berlin within Germany / EU Coordinates Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) Administration Country NUTS Region DE3 City subdivisions 12 boroughs Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) Governing parties SPD / Left. ... Sacred Love Versus Profane Love (1602-1603). ... Lucifer, as depicted in Collin de Plancys Dictionnaire Infernal (1863). ...

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 colouring, clarity and relief that it all comes to life."^[3] Richard Symonds, an English visitor to Rome about 1649/51, recorded the Cupid as being "ye body and face of his (Caravaggio's) owne boy or servant thait (sic) laid with him"^[4] - bearing in mind that "laid with" in 17th century English meant simply "lived with". The Italian art historian Giani Pappi has put forward the theory that this Cecco may be identical with Cecco del Caravaggio ('Caravaggio’s Cecco'), a notable Italian follower of Caravaggio who emerged in the decade after the master’s death. While this remains controversial, there is more widespread support for Pappi's further proposal that Cecco del Caravaggio should be identified as an artist known as Francesco Boneri. Cecco Boneri, if this is his name, appears in many of Caravaggio's paintings, as the juvenile angel supporting Christ in The Conversion of Saint Paul, (1600-1601) possibly as the angel offering a martyr's palm to the saint in The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599-1600) (although seen only as the top of a curly head of hair), as the young Isaac about to have his throat cut in The Sacrifice of Isaac (1603), as an adolescent David in David with the Head of Goliath (1605-1606 - the head is Caravaggio's), and as the John the Baptist now in the Capitoline gallery in Rome. Cecco del Caravaggio (active c. ... The Conversion of Saint Paul (or Conversion of Saul), by the Italian painter Caravaggio, is housed in the Odescalchi Balbi Collection of Rome. ... The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599-1600) [1] is a painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, located in the Contarelli chapel of the church of the French congregation San Luigi Dei Francesi in Rome, Italy. ... The Sacrifice of Isaac is the title of two paintings by the Italian master Caravaggio (1571-1610). ... David with the Head of Goliath is a painting finished around 1609-1610 by the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. ... John the Baptist (sometimes called John in the Wilderness) was the subject of at least eight paintings by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). ...

Notes

1. ^ See Catherine Puglisi, "Caravaggio", pp. 201-202
2. ^ Carrier, David (1 February 1993). "Homosexuality", Principles of Art History Writing. Penn State Press, 65. ISBN 0-271-00945-4. 
3. ^ Quoted in Peter Robb, "M", p.194
4. ^ Quoted ibid, p.195

References

• Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio, Phaidon, London/New York, 1998. ISBN 0-7148-3966-3
• Peter Robb, M:The Caravaggio Enigma, Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, 1998. ISBN 1-876631-79-1