Amor Asleep

Amor Asleep — the sleeping Cupid — was among the most beloved subjects in seventeenth-century Flemish and Italian painting, drawing on ancient sculptural prototypes (the famous Sleeping Eros in marble) and on literary descriptions in Theocritus and Moschus. The subject allowed painters to depict the relaxation of love's power: the weapons laid aside, the eternal child vulnerable and at rest. It carried a double meaning — love temporarily stilled permits reason to rule — that appealed to humanist collectors seeking paintings that were both beautiful and philosophical. Quellinus II painted this canvas in 1636 for a context that brought it to the Museo del Prado. The subject was treated by Caravaggio, Guercino, and Guido Reni in Italy, making it a subject across which different national schools competed. Quellinus's Flemish version would have been valued in Spain as a northern interpretation of a classically resonant theme.

The sleeping figure inverts the usual conventions of figure painting: instead of engaged gaze and active posture, the painter must animate a closed-eye, relaxed form. Quellinus renders the soft, dimpled flesh of the sleeping child with careful sfumato modelling, the form swelling and subsiding with the rhythm of sleep. Wings and quiver of arrows beside the figure complete the identification and contrast the sleeper's vulnerability with his usual power.