GENII AND AMORI
### I. *In pagan art*
The concept of the *G.* (genius), so etymologically precise in ancient Roman religion, was altered when the Romans came into contact with Greek religion and mythology. It was no longer a question of the *dæmon* who guarded an individual man or a particular place, but, deriving from its fundamental meaning, the *G.* came to signify, by extension, personal desires and inclinations, whence the phrase *genio indulgere* in the sense of indulging one’s own inclination or pleasure. From this derives the rapprochement with the mystical Eros (Love) and his retinue of Erotes (= Amores), Latinized as Cupid and Cupidines, conceived and depicted as winged little boys to signify the mobility and fickleness of amorous feeling, and then adopted to represent graceful genre scenes. Well-known are the Rospigliosi amorini preserved in the Museo delle Terme (Rome) and the painting in the House of the Vettii at Pompeii, where amorini are seen busy making oil, fashioning precious objects like jewelers, and selling wine. The winged amorini or genietti are also introduced to enliven mystagogical scenes, such as the scene of the matron’s toilette in the painting of the Villa Item at Pompeii and various stuccoes in the Basilica of the Mysteries at Porta Maggiore. Nor should we forget the so-called funerary Attises, *G.* in youthful guise, derived from the two figures that flank, in the Mithraic reliefs, the scene of the tauroctony, one depicted with a raised torch (the rising sun), the other with a reversed and extinguished torch (the setting sun).
### II. *In Christian art*
In early Christian paintings, sculptures, and mosaics, artists frequently introduced as a decorative motif winged and wingless genietti in the most varied and graceful poses. These figures—writes G. B. De Rossi—are in themselves indifferent, placed as complements to the composition according to the taste and custom of the classical school from which the first artists emerged (Bullettino di arch. crist., 1a serie, 3 [1865], p. 43). Therefore, they should not be considered either as Cupids or, much less, as angels. The most common scenes in which genietti appear are rural and marine ones; genietti harvesting or frolicking among the vine-shoots are seen in the vault of the hypogeum called of the Flavii at Domitilla (2nd century; part not reproduced by Wilpert, cf. however another 4th-century fresco of Domitilla in Pitture, pl. 148), in a 4th-century sarcophagus with the Good Shepherd at the center and genietti at the sides (id., Sarcofagi, pl. 117, 4), in the porphyry sarcophagus of St. Constance and in two mosaic panels of the mausoleum of the same name (4th century); genietti depicted as gardeners, reapers, vine-dressers, and woodcutters are represented in scenes of the seasons (cf., for example, those frescoed in the Coemeterium Praetextati, 3rd century; id., Pitture, pl. 32-34, and in the Coemeterium of Marcus and Marcellianus [4th century], ibid., pl. 245, or in sarcophagi: id., Sarcofagi, pl. 69, 2, 117, 2-3); in rural scenes they are also seen tending sheep (id., Pitture, pl. 31, in Domitilla, 2nd century) or milking them (id., Sarcofagi, pl. 117, 4); in marine scenes they ride birds, guide fragile little boats, fish with nets, lines, tridents, or snares, dive into the water, as in the vanished museum of the vault of St. Constance (4th century), in the mosaic pavement of the cathedral of Aquileia (4th century), in the lower friezes of the apses of St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major, where Jacopo Torriti certainly imitated classical models. At times they hold floral garlands (id., Pitture, pl. 184, 188, 211), are interspersed with orants (Crypts of Lucina, late 2nd century; ibid., pl. 25; SS. Peter and Marcellinus, 4th century; ibid., pl. 217), are placed on flower corbels (ibid., pl. 2), occupy the center of vaults of cubicula (ibid., pl. 2, 3, 4), carry caskets (Coemeterium Maius). In the cemetery of SS. Peter and Marcellinus a genietus holds the place of the Good Shepherd (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 217). In sarcophagi they support the *imagines clypeatae* (id., Sarcofagi, e.g., pl. 11, 4, 32, 3, 37, etc.), and very often the inscribed tablets (ibid., e.g., pl. 11, 4, 14, 3, 128, 1, etc.; also in Pitture, pl. 218). Two genietti attend a cockfight; the victorious cock has beside it the genietus with the palm, while the defeated one has the weeping genietus (id., Sarcofagi, pl. 156). In certain Christian sarcophagi the *G.* of death appears with the reversed torch, of distinctly pagan flavor (ibid., pl. 68, 6, 71, 4, 76, 2, 132, 1). In gold-glass vessels the *G.* often crowns the figures represented there. For representations of the myth of Amor and Psyche, where genietti are also frequently found, see AMORE and PSICHE.
The ornamental motif of genietti tends to disappear in the art of the Middle and Late Middle Ages, except in rare cases, such as in the sculpture of Wiligelmus on the façade of the cathedral of Modena (12th century), only to reappear frequently in the painting and sculpture of the Renaissance and then in the Baroque and modern periods.
— See pl. I.