Inventing the Renaissance Putto

The figure of the putto (often portrayed as a mischievous baby) made frequent appearances in the art and literature of Renaissance Italy. Commonly called spiritelli, or sprites, putti embodied a minor species of demon, in their nature neither good nor bad. They included natural spirits, animal spirits, and the spirits of sight and sound, as well as hobgoblin fantasies, bogeys, and the spirits contained in wine. Among the sensations ascribed to spiritelli were feelings of love, erotic arousal, and startling frights.

After discussing the many manifestations of the putto-spiritello in fifteenth-century Italian art and literature, Charles Dempsey offers parallel interpretations of two works: Botticelli's Mars and Venus, a painting in which infant Satyr-putti appear as the panic-inducing spirits of the nightmare, and Politian's Stanze, a poem in which masked cupids appear to the hero in a deceiving dream. He concludes with an examination of the function of such masks in the poetry and public masquerades sponsored by Lorenzo de'Medici and in Michelangelo's scheme for the decoration of the Medici Chapel.

Throughout, Dempsey advances a larger argument about the nature of Italian Renaissance art. Rather than simply reviving classical forms, he says, the art accommodated and fused them within local, vernacular, and modern Italian traditions, both literary and pictorial.

Focusing on the infant figure of the putto (or spiritello) and the mask that often accompanies him, Dempsey argues that 15th-century Italian art not only revives classical forms, but fuses them to local, vernacular, and modern Italian traditions, both literary and pictorial.

Charles Dempsey is Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art at The Johns Hopkins University.
A work of scholarship outstanding for its originality in approach, soundness of research, and depth of insight and interpretation. (Hellmut Wohl, author of "The Aesthetics of Italian Renaissance Art: A Reconsideration of Style")
Drawing inventively on a rich body of scholarship, "Inventing the Renaissance Putto" by Charles Dempsey uses these findings as a point of departure for a fresh and remarkable study. ("TLS")