La bellezza maschile -- Amore

Speranza

This embodied Cupid, drawn from Apuleius and the Greek Anthology and introduced into the Italian (rather than Latin) vernacular tradition by Paride, Tebaldeo, and Niccolò da Correggio, gradually makes his appearance in the visual art of northern Italy in the 500s.

At the Villa Chigi around 1515, Rafaello depicted the story of Amore and Psyche in fresco, in which the power of Amore overgods and men is set forth through his seduction of Jupiter.

Notably, this is shown as an effect of Amore’s irresistable gaze into the eyes of the older god, an arousal of the sense of sight which then stimulates andsolicits the desire to touch—Jupiter’s caress of Cupid’s cheek, then his kiss.

Parmigianino’s astonishing Cupid Carving his Bow, painted forthe artist’s patron and protector Francesco Baiardi in 1529, is a visual deploy-ment of a set of tropes already at work in the Mantuan verses on Isabella’smarble Cupids and their predecessors in "The Greek Anthology":
: “when you see thesweet Eros in Thespiae you will say that he will not only set fire to a stone,but to cold adamant.”
Once again, Cupid’s body has the color and theluster of cold marble, yet (as the crying
putto
below has discovered) it burns with a devastating fire.

Petrarchan poets acclaimed the “bianchi marmi e ilcolorito fiore” of a lover’s complexion, and this is most vividly manifestedhere not only in the rose tints of the god’s cheeks but of his fleshy posterior.