Wounded Cupid (L’Amour blessé)

In the summer of 1873, Carpeaux spent several weeks on holiday with his wife and son Charles at the house of Alexandre Dumas (fils) in Puys, near Dieppe. The idea for this work came to him when the child, after hurting his arm, smiled at him through tears. Executed in marble and exhibited at the following year’s Salon (1874), the work was a success with both the public and the critics, combining the tragic ingredients beloved of bourgeois taste with exceptional technical skill, resulting in the creation of two additional marble replicas during the artist’s lifetime.
The example held by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, which the artist kept until his death and was then bought by the collector at the Atelier Carpeaux sale in 1913, is a very interesting piece from a technical point of view since the armature and connecting elements, which are inherent in its function as a chef modèle, are visible.