page_title: Francesco Anelli
section_title: Portrait of a Child as Cupid
hierarchical_section_title: Francesco Anelli / Portrait of a Child as Cupid
caption_attribution_description: English: "Portrait of a Child as Cupid", painted c. 1836-37 in New York City. The painting depicts William Paterson Van Rensselaer, Jr.
context_page_description: Francesco Anelli was an Italian-American Romantic period artist. He is best known for his oil painting that depicts Julia Gardiner Tyler, the second wife of the 10th U.S. President John Tyler. Anelli's monumental masterpiece and most acclaimed painting, entitled The End of the World, has been lost.
context_section_description: Anelli's Portrait of a Child as Cupid—depicting William Paterson Van Rensselaer, Jr.—was painted in New York City and was commissioned by the subject's father, William Paterson Van Rensselaer, Sr. (1805–1872).  The picture was lent by him in 1847 to the annual exhibition held by the Albany Gallery of Fine Arts, of which Van Rensselaer was an honorary member.  The painting, which descended in the family, may have hung in the Rensselaer Manor House in Albany and almost certainly hung in both the Elk Street town house built by William Paterson Van Rensselaer, Sr., at the time of his first marriage in 1833 and then in Beverwyck, in Bath (now Rensselaer), New York, which Van Rensselaer built after inheriting the Rensselaerswyck estate lands on the east bank of the Hudson river, following the death of his father, Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer III, on 26 January 1839.  During the late 1830s, Anelli also painted portraits of William Paterson Van Rensselaer, Jr. (Private Collection); his sister, Euphemia White Van Rensselaer (1816–1888; Private Collection); and his sister-in-law, Mary Rebecca Tallmadge Van Rensselaer (1817–1872; Albany Institute of History and Art).
  Anelli's records of other sitters suggest that he drew his patronage from New York State citizens of upper classes. In Portrait of a Child as Cupid, Anelli presents Van Rensselaer, Jr. in a spectacularly theatrical manner, revealed triumphantly by the parting of the heavy red draperies. The Empire period ormolu daybed—with its gold embroidery and tassels—bespeaks high-style furniture such as that produced concurrently by Charles-Honoré Lannuier, Joseph Meeks (1771–1868), and Antoine-Gabriel Quervelle (1789–1856). With the bow and quiver of arrows by the side of the bed, the artist identifies the child with Cupid as a symbol of love, a conceit similar to that chosen later by William Henry Rinehart (1825–1874) in his statue of Henry Elliot Johnston, Jr., Cupid with a Bow, 1874 (National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.).
caption: Anelli's oil painting, Portrait of a Child as Cupid, depicting young William Paterson Van Rensselaer, Jr., c. 1836–37
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