Today, we know Cupid as a chubby, apple-cheeked baby with wings, a bow and arrow and a penchant for match-making, but he wasn’t always so infantile. In fact, he used to be quite the sex symbol. In Roman  mythology, he was the well-muscled god of erotic love and beauty and his Greek counterpart was known as Eros, which is where the word erotic originates. Obviously, the original Cupid was not exactly the chaste innocent that we are so familiar with today, capable of making gods and humans alike quiver with desire.

Many stories of Cupid involve mishaps with the targets of his arrows of affection, making him a sometimes mischeivous figure in both ancient mythologies and more modern re-interpretations of his tale. His own story of love is that his mom, Venus, became jealous of a princess so gorgeous and enchanting that the people forgot to attend the temple of Venus and pay her due worship. The mortal woman’s name was Psyche and dear old mom sent her boy to make Psyche fall in love with something hideous so that her people would look upon her with disgust. Instead, Cupid fell in love with Psyche and convinced the gods to give her the gift of immortality so that they might be together.

The idea of Cupid as a winged baby boy did not develop until the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods of art, when italian painters began to include what are known as putti, or baby angels, in their paintings. These putti were not necessarily linked to Cupid, but were meant as childlike representations of angels from the bible. However, the image stuck, creating the image of Cupid as we have become familiar with today.