Victorious Cupid, one of the Caravaggio’s masterpieces, will go for the first time on display in UK and for free, thanks to a major loan from the Gelmäldergalerie in Berlin to the London’s Wallace Collection.
It will be the centrepiece of a focused exhibition, accompanied by two ancient Roman sculptures which, four centuries ago, were displayed in the same collection.
The painting and sculptures once belonged to the fabulously wealthy and erudite Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564–1637) who, with his older brother Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, lived in a vast palazzo near the Pantheon in Rome. The Cupid hung in his ‘great room of ancient paintings’ with 13 other works by Caravaggio and a splendid array of works by Raphael, Giorgione, Titian and Andrea del Sarto.
Victorious Cupid is a shocking picture, whose provocative sexuality, and full-frontal nudity, stops the viewer in their tracks. Lifesize and painted from nature, a 12-year-old Roman boy – a pair of arrows thrust into his hand – wears only a pair of eagle’s wings and a cheeky grin. The painting’s theme is ’Love conquers all’ and at his feet, in disarray, lie symbols of culture, learning and power, all brought low by the mischievous god of Love.
The Wallace exhibition (26 November 2025 – 12 April 2026) creates a sense of walking through the Palazzo Giustiniani, with images of sculptures decorating the walls, and suggesting views through the window to the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, where Caravaggio’s Scenes from the Life of St Matthew had launched his brilliant career. Through maps and prints it evokes the world of 17th-century Rome, where, in a small area of dark alleyways, piazzas, taverns, artists’ studios, churches, and splendid palaces, the drama of Caravaggio’s life was played out – and a revolution in European painting took place.
Caravaggio painted the Victorious Cupid in 1602 at the height of his success, in a period of astonishing creativity. Only a few years later, in 1606, he killed a man in a fight and fled Rome; he died at Porto Ercole on the Tuscan coast in 1610, as he attempted to return to the city.
“I am thrilled – Xavier Bray, Director of the Wallace Collection, says – that we are exhibiting Caravaggio’s masterpiece Victorious Cupid in the UK for the very first time. It is an exceptional cultural exchange between us and the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Commissioned by Vincenzo Giustiniani in 1602, Victorious Cupid, with its mix of the sacred and the profane, is the ultimate Caravaggio painting. In it are all the hallmarks of his greatest work: sensuality, movement and the dramatic use of light.”.
