Time clipping Cupid’s wings

Perhaps it could come from the Merenda collection, this painting having as subject “Time clipping Cupid’s wings”, as stylistically and for the finesse of the chromatic accords it is easy to place it between 1740 and 1743, when the artist Pompeo Batoni painted for his patron’s numerous allegories, starting from the purest vein of seventeenth-century classicism proposed by Domenichino and Reni.

The figure of Time, described as a handsome old man with nakedness still full of vigor, a modest baldness and an honest gray hair, is recognizable by the large wings, the hourglass that reaffirms with them the concept of the flight of time, the scythe, commonly considered an exclusive symbol of Death, but which iconography already used as an alternative with the messoric sickle, both blind instruments that cut all that lives, in the hands of the old Saturn, the lame god of time.

Here the poor Cupid screams desperately, scratches and kicks trying to escape the Time that holds him firmly between his legs. He has already torn his bow to pieces and thrown his quiver to the ground and with quiet, indifferent determination is plucking the feathers off his wings. The melodramatic scene set by Batoni, despite its tragic allegorical representation, is conducted with the skilful chromatic elegance and compositional balance, typical of the painter. Private collection.

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