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On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Michelangelo Buonarroti Italian
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 503
The iconography of this idealized youth makes him difficult to identify. Like Cupid, he has a quiver but there is no sign he ever had Cupid’s traditional wings. The statue is first recorded in 1556 at the house of Jacopo Galli in Rome, where the work is identified as Apollo. Galli is known, however, to have owned a Cupid sculpted by the young Michelangelo. So it is significant that by 1650, when the figure occupied a garden niche at the Villa Borghese, Rome, he had been retitled Cupid. By 1902 the sculpture was gravely damaged. Nonetheless the dealer Stefano Bardini recognized it as Michelangelo’s work when he offered it at auction in London, but this attribution was soon forgotten or discounted. It was later purchased by the architect Stanford White and installed on a fountain at the Fifth Avenue mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, today the office of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York, where only recently it was recognized as Michelangelo’s lost Cupid.
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Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
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Artwork Details
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Title: Cupid
Maker: Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, Caprese 1475–1564 Rome)
Date: ca. 1490
Culture: Italian, Florence
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: Overall (wt confirmed): H. 37 x W. 13 1/4 x D. 14 in., 177lb. (94 x 33.7 x 35.6 cm, 80.2867kg)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Lent by the French State, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs
Accession Number: L.2009.40
Learn more about this artwork
Timeline of Art History
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Anatomy in the Renaissance
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
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Mannerism: Bronzino (1503-1572) and his Contemporaries
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Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function
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The French Academy in Rome
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The Papacy and the Vatican Palace
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The Papacy during the Renaissance
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Venetian Color and Florentine Design
Chronology
Florence and Central Italy, 1400-1600 A.D.
Museum Publications
Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer
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European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met
The Met's comprehensive collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century.
