Amor Vincit Omnia, Caravaggio (briefly) on Manchester Square
During my Christmas trip to London I made a foray on Saturday morning to one of my favourite museums, the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square. The extraordinary collection of paintings, sculpture, and the decorative arts accrued by the Marquesses of Hertford in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is housed in Hertford House. It is delightful oasis of civilised calm, never too busy (even on the Christmas holiday weekend), has a very nice cafe, and is free. What’s not to love?
On this occasion my objective was the small exhibition of Caravaggio’s Amor Vincit Omnia (often called The Victorious Cupid in English) which is on loan from the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin until 12 April 2026.
The painting was commissioned by Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani, scion of a powerful Genoese banking family who had been the rulers of the island Chios in the Aegean until its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1566 when Vincenzo was just two years old. The Giustiniani family retreated to Rome, where they had a relative in the Curia, and established Palazzo Giustiniani (now one of the buildings of the Italian Senate) close to the Pantheon, across from the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, then still under (interminable) construction.
