Sleeping Cupid, ca. 1630s
Bartolomeo Coriolano (Italian, Bolognese, ca. 1599–ca. 1676), after Guido Reni (Italian, Bolognese, 1575–1642)
Chiaroscuro woodcut from two blocks
Artist Biography
Technical Glossary
Bartolomeo Coriolano (Italian, Bolognese, ca. 1599–ca. 1676), after Guido Reni (Italian, Bolognese, 1575–1642)
Chiaroscuro woodcut from two blocks
sheet 13 3/16 x 15 7/16 in. (33.5 x 39.2 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1922 (22.73.3[107])
Many statues of sleeping cupids survived from antiquity, inspiring imitations by sculptors such as Michelangelo and François Duquesnoy. Reni's painted representations of dozing infants, including the Christ Child, were particularly prized, as was this print, which the seventeenth-century art historian Carlo Cesare Malvasia called "the famous head of the sleeping Cupid."
