Cupid Disguised as a Shepherd Boy at The Walker Art Gallery, United Kingdom by Oliver Laric

Description

John Gibson’s “Cupid Disguised as a Shepherd” serves as a good example of artistic reproduction within the sculptor’s studio. This work was his most popular subject, with at least nine versions commissioned in marble by patrons. Gibson first began working on the subject around 1830, and it was his belief that he had created a new interpretation of the god of love, although the figure was inspired by classical and Renaissance sources. The subject merges classicism with the contemporary taste for sentimentality, and also conveys a sense of theatricality as the god wears a costume to hide his identity. The statue was inspired by the pastoral comedy Aminta (1573) by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. In this poem the god of love appears disguised as a shepherd so that he can use his arrows to play with the hearts of the nymph Silvia and the youth Aminta. In his memoirs, Gibson recorded in Italian the opening passage of the poem: Who wou’d believe, that under an human Form, and under these pastoral Spoils, should be conceal’d a God? and that not one of the Sylvan Deities, or of the vulgar Ranks of Gods; but amongst the Superiour, and the Heavenly Ones the most Powerful: who often causes the bloody Sword to fall from the hand of Mars, and from Neptune, the Shaker of the Earth, the great Trident, and the eternal Thunders from Supreme Jove. In this Disguise, certainly, and in these Cloaths, Venus, my Mother, won’t so easily know me to be her son Cupid.27 Dressed in a shepherd’s hat…