Cupid and Anacreon

Whether in Thorvaldsen’s drawings, sculptures or art collections, Cupid is a constantly recurring motif and one that is generally popular. Here we have the situation in which Cupid is visiting the ageing poet Anacreon – as described by Anacreon himself in his third ode. The same year as doing the drawing, Thorvaldsen modelled two reliefs using this motif. It was in this connection that Thorvaldsen for the first and last time used Parisian marble. One of Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known fairy tales, “The Naught Boy” (1835), was presumably written under the inspiration of both Anacreon’s poem and Thorvaldsen’s interpretation of him in Cupid and Anacreon.