The mythological god of erotic desire, Cupid delights in making unsuspecting mortals fall madly in love by shooting them with his enchanted arrows. But beware, his backstory is far more complicated than it appears on a valentine.

Did you know the little troublemaker carries two types of arrows? One type has sharp, golden tips that create uncontrollable desire. The other has blunt, leaden tips that cause its victims to flee in disgust.

Sexual desire was an important part of life in ancient Rome, but considered dangerous if it became too dominant. Cupid embodies this contradiction. He’s a toddler with lethal weapons.

Love hurts

In Apollo Pursuing Daphne, a cabinet painting by the sublime Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Cupid is the antihero in a tale of love and revenge taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a collection of stories that rank among the most influential in Western culture.

In Ovid’s tale, the god Apollo kills a misanthropic serpent named The Python by piercing it with 1,000 arrows. Cupid watches the epic battle from a safe distance, clutching his little quiver of darts. Apollo spots the pint-sized archer and says, “Impudent boy, what are you doing with a man’s weapons?”

Cupid does not take the wisecrack lightheartedly. He shoots Apollo with a sharp arrow, causing mythology’s golden boy to fall in love with the first woman he sees: the virginal nymph Daphne. Cupid then shoots Daphne with a blunt arrow, causing her to despise Apollo with every fiber of her being.

Daphne runs, with Apollo in hot pursuit. When she sees her father Peneus, a river god, she screams for help and he swiftly transforms his daughter into a laurel tree to protect her from sexual assault.

In Tiepolo’s exquisite painting, full of movement, the artist portrays the dramatic moment when Daphne’s right leg begins to transform into bark and her fingers sprout branches. Her left leg has already turned into a tree trunk, rooting her to the spot. Even so, Apollo cannot help but desire her. In the story, he kisses her bark yet even the wood shrinks away.

And where is Cupid? Hiding in the shadows, hoping to escape Apollo’s wrath.

I knew you were trouble

“Why is that little angel covered in bees?” you may be wondering as you look at this curious picture by German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder.

That’s no angel, that’s Cupid getting stung by bees that caught him stealing a honeycomb from their hive. He’s asking his mother Venus how a creature so small can inflict so much pain. “You’re little, and look how much pain you cause,” she replies.

Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, is naked except for a gold choker around her neck and a red velvet hat trimmed with ostrich feathers on her head. Cranach had a curious habit of embellishing nudes from classical mythology with the same accessories worn by the women of the Saxon court in Wittenberg, where he was court painter for most of his career.

Venus is reaching for an apple and making eyes at us, evoking Eve from The Old Testament. The artist often portrayed women with this facial expression because weibermacht (the power of women over men) was a popular theme in sixteenth-century Germany.

On the far side of the lake, two figures make their way down a steep path as the blue sky fades into the warm peach and yellow hues of sunset.

In the upper right corner of the canvas, high above the branches, the artist painted a Latin inscription that holds the key to this painting —

It is a witty warning about the effect of giving in to temptation and transitory pleasure. The four lines in Latin translate as:

“Young Cupid was stealing honey from a hive when a bee stung the thief on the finger. And so it is for us. The brief and fleeting pleasure we seek is mingled with sadness and brings us pain.“

Charlotte Wytema, Curatorial Fellow, The National Gallery, 2022

The end of a love affair

The Bath of Venus, a luscious painting by François Boucher, was commissioned by Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, who is more popularly known as Madame de Pompadour, the beloved mistress of King Louis XV. Clever and witty, she rose to become one of the most influential women in 18th-century France.

In Boucher’s painting, Venus bears an uncanny resemblance to Pompadour, who apparently had no compunctions about seeing herself depicted like this. The picture probably was displayed in her private suite of rooms at the Château de Bellevue, a retreat near Paris built for her by the French king.

Boucher is the artist most closely associated with the Parisian Rococo style, however, here he creates a strong sense of movement by adopting traditional Baroque techniques: crisscrossing diagonals, curvilinear forms, and slanting recessions. Nevertheless, like most Rococo paintings, this one is fluffy, theatrical, and a little bit naughty.

The intimate relationship between Louis XV and Pompadour may have inspired the subject of this canvas, which was painted when their carnal liaison was turning platonic. Pompadour miscarried several times and the medical complications — together with her history of generally poor health — made it impossible for her to continue having a sexual relationship with the king.

In The Bath of Venus, a wistful-looking goddess disarms Cupid — an apt metaphor to describe the premature end of a passionate love affair.

Part-time lover

For three hundred years, Cupid was hidden under a thick layer of oil paint in this much-loved painting by the great Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. Who covered up the little mischief-maker? Vermeer? Or someone else?

Scholars long thought Vermeer cancelled Cupid. That is, until the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden museum in Germany began cleaning the painting in 2017 and the empty wall responded differently than the rest of the picture to a solvent used to remove old varnish. Microscopic samples taken from the area left no doubt: Cupid was covered up long after Vermeer died.

Restorers then removed a tiny strip of the overpaint, about half an inch wide. Not only was the brushwork on Cupid unmistakably Vermeer’s, it was in excellent condition. So they removed all of the overpaint using a surgical scalpel and a microscope — an exacting process that took two years.

In Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, the blush on the young lady’s cheeks suggests she is reading a love letter, and the re-emergence of Cupid confirms it.

But if you look closely, the golden-haired god is using his right foot to trample a black mask — a symbol of deception. This, along with a bowl of possibly forbidden fruit upended in the foreground, raises uncomfortable questions about the letter’s content and the mysterious writer’s marital status.

Vermeer placed the innocent girl at an open window because she longs to be more worldly. In the “painting within a painting” on the wall, Cupid conveys a timeless warning: love and deceit rarely co-exist in the real world.

If you see her, say hello

Have you ever seen so many putti in one place? When I first saw this painting at the Prado in Madrid, I thought it portrayed Spring Training for wanna-be Cupids who must learn to fly, fight, embrace, shoot arrows, and pull each other’s hair. Ah, l’amour.

The Worship of Venus is not an easy picture to explain, nor was it easy for Titian — one of the greatest painters in art history — to pull off. The composition includes more figures than any other canvas by the Venetian master, who must have wrestled mightily with the intervals (the spacing and pacing) between putti.

The work was commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara for his private art gallery, known as The Alabaster Chamber, which boasted at least four genuine masterpieces. This legendary room was hidden in a covered passageway that doubled as a royal escape route linking the Castello Estense with the Palazzo Municipale.

Titian based the composition on the writings of Philostratus, a third-century teacher who wrote a series of essays describing the impressive paintings he’d seen in a villa near Naples — paintings that were lost long ago:

The cupids are gathering apples; and if there are many of them, do not be surprised. The cupids are many because there are many things men love. But listen carefully; for along with my description of the garden, the fragrance of the apples will come to you.

Philostratus, Imagines I, 6

Recreating a lost masterpiece of antiquity would have flattered the Duke, who could liken himself to Alexander the Great, the patron of Apelles, the most celebrated painter of the ancient world.

In Titian’s composition, a statue of Venus towers over the frenetic scene, but where is the goddess herself? At the far right, two women run into the apple orchard while trying to see someone outside of the picture space. One woman uses a hand mirror for a better view. Is “Vennie” on her way?

Some historians believe The Worship of Venus depicts an ancient Roman ritual conducted annually on April 1st, a day when women called upon the goddess of love and beauty to erase every blemish on their bodies to improve their chances of finding true love.

I hate to think what would happen if Venus logged on to Instagram.