The discovery of a hidden Cupid in a Dresden Vermeer is a vivid reminder of quite how important “pictures within pictures” are for appreciating the Delft master’s enigmatic genre scenes. Of ...

A hidden Cupid in Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, one of the world’s most famous paintings, is set to resurface on the canvas after two and a half centuries behind a layer ...

A long-lost Cupid in one of Vermeer’s best-known paintings has been revealed after three centuries. But it’s far from the only unsolved mystery in the Dutch artist’s life.

I know nothing about what motivated Bartolomeo Manfredi in 1613 when he painted “Cupid Chastised,” which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. ... Manfredi’s picture is about masculine shame.

After nearly three centuries behind a layer of paint, a naked Cupid has surfaced in one of the world’s best-loved artworks, drastically altering the background of a quiet interior scene.

An image of Cupid was covered over in “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” for nearly 300 years. Now that he’s back on show, the famous painting looks quite different.

Jacques-Louis David was in exile in Belgium when he turned to erotic mythology Jacques-Louis David was one of art history’s great propagandists. His lifetime (1748-1825) overlapped with the last ...

Of all the 937 paintings in the permanent collection of the Chicago Art Institute, two most important to Director Robert Bartholow Harshe are Rembrandt's Girl at the Open Half-Door and El ...

Each Valentine’s Day, when I see images of the chubby winged god Cupid taking aim with his bow and arrow at his unsuspecting victims, I take refuge in my training as a scholar of early Greek ...