Cupid Secretly Drawing an Arrow (1807): Art, History and Details

Cupid Secretly Drawing an Arrow (1807) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gilles-Lambert Godecharle (Belgian, 1750–1835).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This clay model is a maquette for a sculpture in limestone more than three feet tall, entitled Cupid Disguised, Hiding Under a Veil. The motif is borrowed from the Marlborough cameo (an ancient Roman cameo now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. no. 99.101) that was a source of inspiration for neoclassical artists. The gem illustrates the wedding of Cupid and Psyche—shown as veiled children with protruding wings—from which Godecharle extracted the single figure of Cupid and, instead, depicted him in ambush.

Object facts

• Title: Cupid Secretly Drawing an Arrow
• Date: 1807
• Creator attribution: Gilles-Lambert Godecharle (Belgian, 1750–1835)
• Culture: Belgium, Brussels
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 22.8 cm (9 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Sculpture 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1977.72

A detail from the museum

Cupid traipses daintily on rose blossoms, ready to shoot his love-filled arrow at an unsuspecting victim.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hôtel Drouot. Catalogue des objets d'art ... faiences, porcelaines ... tableaux, livres ... meubles ... dont la vente après décès de M. Fitzhenry. Feb. 18-21, 1914.
• Galerie Georges Petit (Paris). Catalogue des sculptures en marbre, terre cuite, plâtre des XVIIe, XVIIIe & XIXe siècles par ... composant la Collection de M. Marius Paulme ... May 15, 1929.
• Musée Galliéra. Objets d'art et de bel ameublement. Dec. 6, 1972.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.