The Capitol Dome

23 Fig. 5. Philip Martiny. Marble sculptures of putti on the south staircase, ca. 1896, Great Hall, Library of Congress, omas Jefferson Building. cherub, also known as a lamassu, lamassus, or shedu, refers to a lion or bull with eagle's wings and a king's head. Dur- ing the Italian Renaissance, however, the cherub became a winged, nude male child—as, for example, in the Sistine Madonna (fig. 6) (1512) by the master painter Raphael (1483–1520)—and is still the standard interpretation. In its Renaissance guise, a cherub can become a cupid with the addition of a bow and arrows. Also called eros, amor, amore, or amoretto (plural amoretti), a cupid is equated with romantic and sexual love and repeatedly appears in Valentine's Day imagery. e terms genie and genius can be misleading because they share the same plural form, genii. Whereas a genie refers to a spirit from Arabian folklore that is imprisoned in a bottle or an oil lamp, a genius alludes to a good or an evil spirit that attends a person throughout his or her lifetime. All of this confusion regarding terminology can be avoided by classifying Martiny's staircase children as putti. e Italian word putti (plural of the singular putto) comes from the Latin term putus, meaning a boy. Putti are oen shown nude and sometimes, but not always, with wings. e typical representation of putti is playfully cavorting, as seen in the pen-and-ink drawing Landscape with a Bacchanal of Putti and a Goat (fig. 7) (first half of the seventeenth century) by the Italian painter Giovanni Andrea Podestà (1608– ca. 1674). However, European Baroque artists also depicted putti at work, as the French engraver Michel Dorigny (1616– 1665) did in his etching with engraving, Putti with Grapes Fig. 6. Raphael. Sistine Madonna, 1512, oil on canvas, GemäldegalerieAlteMeister, Dresden. THE CAPITOL DOME

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