Pair of Italian School Paintings, 17th/18th Century, Oil on Panel. One depicts a putto holding a shell (#2780) and the other depicts a putto holding grapes (#2781). 

Smaller Overall: 15 3/4 X 10 in. 

Smaller Sight: 14 1/3 X 8 5/8 in. 

#2780 . 

Larger Overall: 16 X 10 1/8 in. 

Larger Sight: 14 5/8 X 8 3/4 in. 

#2781 . 

A putto is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and very often winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism, the putto came to represent a sort of baby angel in religious art, often called cherubs (plural cherubim), though in traditional Christian theology a cherub is actually one of the most senior types of angel. The same figures were also seen in representations of classical myth, and increasingly in general decorative art. In Baroque art the putto came to represent the omnipresence of God. A putto representing a cupid is also called an amorino (plural amorini) or amoretto (plural amoretti). The Italian word comes from the Latin word putus, meaning “boy” or “child.” Today the term can colloquially translate as a “sweet-natured toddler.” In Renaissance art, the form of the putto was derived in various ways, including the Greek Eros or Roman Amor/Cupid, the god of love and companion of Aphrodite or Venus, the Roman “genius,” a type of guardian spirit, or sometimes the Greek “daemon,” a type of messenger spirit, being halfway between the realms of the human and the divine. The putto disappeared from art during the Middle Ages and were revived during the Quattrocento, generally attributed to Donatello in Florence in the 1420s. They also experienced a major revival in the 19th Century, where they gamboled through paintings by French academic painters, from advertisements to Gustave Doré’s illustrations for Orlando Furioso.