Amor Vincit Omnia

The title comes from a line of Virgil, love conquers all, and Caravaggio takes it literally. His Cupid is a real Roman boy with dark eagle wings, grinning, stepping over everything human beings work at. Under his feet lie a violin and a lute, armour, a crown, a set square and compass, a pen and sheets of writing, all the tools of music, war, power, learning, tumbled and beaten. The man who owned it, the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani, was one of the great collectors in Rome around 1601, and he prized this painting above everything else he had. There is a story that he kept it behind a curtain and unveiled it last, as the climax of a tour, so that whatever a visitor had just admired was exactly what the boy was trampling.