MID-19TH CENTURY, AFTER THE ANTIQUE

The present gilt-bronze group of the infant Cupid astride a Centaur is a reduction of the Greek marble group of the third or second century BC, which is documented as being in the Borghese collection by 1613 (F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique - The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, p. 179, no. 21). By 1650 it was in the Villa Borghese in a room which was named after it, and it remained there until the historic sale of the Borghese antiquities in 1807 to Napoleon, whose sister had married Prince Camillo Borghese. The marble was widely interpreted as an allegory of the power of love, represented by Cupid, over lust.