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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 Amor, the Roman Cupid, wearing dark eagle wings, half-sitting on or climbing down from what appears to be a table. Scattered around are the emblems of all human endeavors – violin and lute, armor, coronet, square and compasses, pen and manuscript, bay leaves, and flower, tangled and trampled under Cupid's foot. The painting illustrates the line from Virgil's Eclogues , 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 reference to the achievements of Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani. Giustiniani is said to have prized it above all other works in his collection. [1]
The subject of Cupid was common for the age. [2] Caravaggio's depiction of Cupid is unusually realistic – where other depictions, such as the contemporary Sleeping Cupid by Battistello Caracciolo, show an idealized, almost generic version. The dramatic chiaroscuro lighting and the photographic clarity, is the mingling of the allegorical and the real. 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[ why? ] - (one of several striking elements from the former being the bent knee dominating a submissive loser [3] in a very similar composition).
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." [6] Richard Symonds, an English visitor to Rome about 1649/51, recorded the Cupid as being "ye body and face of his (Caravaggio's) own boy or servant that (sic) laid with him". [7] 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 of 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 (Caravaggio, Rome) (ca. 1610 – the head is Caravaggio's), and as the John the Baptist now in the Capitoline Gallery in Rome.
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]
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
The Caravaggisti were stylistic followers of the late 16th-century Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. His influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from Mannerism was profound. Caravaggio never established a workshop as most other painters did, and thus had no school to spread his techniques. Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the psychological realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work. But it can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio himself was forgotten almost immediately after his death. Many of his paintings were re-ascribed to his followers, such as The Taking of Christ, which was attributed to the Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst until 1990.
Giovanni Baglione was an Italian Late Mannerist and Early Baroque painter and art historian. Although a prolific painter, Baglione is best remembered for his encyclopedic collection of biographies of the other artists working in Rome during his lifetime, and particularly his acrimonious relationship with the slightly younger artist Caravaggio through his art and writings.
Judith Beheading Holofernes is a painting of the biblical episode by Caravaggio, painted in c. 1598–1599 or 1602, in which the widow Judith stayed with the Assyrian general Holofernes in his tent after a banquet then decapitated him after he passed out drunk. The painting was rediscovered in 1950 and is part of the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome. The exhibition 'Dentro Caravaggio' Palazzo Reale, Milan, suggests a date of 1602 on account of the use of light underlying sketches not seen in Caravaggio's early work but characteristic of his later works. The exhibition catalogue also cites biographer artist Giovanni Baglione's account that the work was commissioned by Genoa banker Ottavio Costa.
Cecco del Caravaggio is the Notname given to a painter who worked in Rome in the early decades of the 17th century and was an important early follower of Caravaggio (1571–1610). In the past art historians have suggested he may have been a Flemish, French or Spanish Caravaggist but more recently some have identified the artist with Francesco Boneri, although this is not universally accepted. In his work the artist responded in a very individual and original manner to Caravaggio's naturalism.
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas is a painting of the subject of the same name. It is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, c. 1601-1602. There are two autograph versions of Caravaggio's The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, an ecclesiastical "Trieste" version for Girolamo Mattei which is now in a private collection and a secular "Potsdam" version for Vincenzo Giustiniani that later entered the Royal Collection of Prussia, survived the Second World War unscathed, and can now be admired in the Palais at Sanssouci, Potsdam.
Basket of Fruit (c.1599) is a still life painting by the Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), which hangs in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.
John the Baptist was the subject of at least eight paintings by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610).
David with the Head of Goliath, dated c. 1600-1601, is a painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio (1571–1610), housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Gemäldegalerie, Vienna. Peter Robb believes it was acquired by the conde de Villamediana in Naples between 1611 and 1617, as Giovanni Bellori records Villamediana as having returned to Spain with a half-figure of David by Caravaggio.
The Crowning with Thorns is a painting by the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Made probably in 1602/1604 or possibly around 1607, it is now located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. It was bought in Rome by the Imperial ambassador, Baron Ludwig von Lebzelter in 1809, but did not arrive in Vienna until 1816.
Love conquers all may refer to:
Events from the year 1602 in art.
Victorious Cupid is an oil painting, see Amor Vincit Omnia (Caravaggio).
In classical mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars. He is also known as Amor. His Greek counterpart is Eros. Although Eros is generally portrayed as a slender winged youth in Classical Greek art, during the Hellenistic period, he was increasingly portrayed as a chubby boy. During this time, his iconography acquired the bow and arrow that represent his source of power: a person, or even a deity, who is shot by Cupid's arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire. In myths, Cupid is a minor character who serves mostly to set the plot in motion. He is a main character only in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, when wounded by his own weapons, he experiences the ordeal of love. Although other extended stories are not told about him, his tradition is rich in poetic themes and visual scenarios, such as "Love conquers all" and the retaliatory punishment or torture of Cupid.
Amor Vincit Omnia is the second full-length album by British progressive rock band Pure Reason Revolution.
Féréol Bonnemaison was a French portrait painter, lithographer, restorer, and art dealer.
The Resurrection by Cecco del Caravaggio, the Italian Baroque painter, is the only painting known for certain to be his. It was commissioned in 1619 by Piero Guicciardini, the Tuscan ambassador to Rome. Through the use of alternate strong lights and deep shadows the chiaroscuro highlights the vividness of the dramatic scene. One of Cecco's most notable works, the painting is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Master of the Gamblers is the notname given to a painter active in Rome and possibly also in Naples in the second and third decade of the 17th century, whose subject matter and style rank him among the Caravaggisti. The artist depicted genre subjects and still life elements in his works in a stark naturalist manner. The identity and nationality of the artist are not known. Art historians have yet to arrive at a unanimous view on the nationality, work location and the oeuvre of the artist. He may have been Italian, but a northern European background has also been proposed.
Divine Love Conquering Earthly Love is an oil on canvas painting dating to 1602–1603, that is now held in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini, Rome. It was painted by Italian painter Giovanni Baglione. It is the second version that Baglione painted of this subject; the first version is now in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen in Berlin. Both of these versions were painted for Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, an Italian clergyman.
The paintings in the Contarelli Chapel form a group of three large-format canvases painted by Caravaggio between 1599 and 1602, initially commissioned by Cardinal Matteo Contarelli for the Church of St. Louis of the French in Rome, and eventually honored after his death by his executors. The intervention of Cardinal Del Monte, Caravaggio's patron, was decisive in obtaining this contract, which was the most significant of the painter's young career when he was not yet 30. The works evoke three major stages in the life of the apostle Saint Matthew: his calling by Jesus Christ, his writing of the Gospel guided by an angel, and his martyrdom. They are still preserved in the Church of St. Louis of the French.