When quite an old man, rhyming those rough platonic sonnets, he always spoke of love as masterful and awful.

For his austere and melancholy nature, Eros was no tender or light-winged youngling, but a masculine tyrant, the tamer of male spirits.
Therefore this Cupid, adorable in the power and beauty of his vigorous manhood, may well remain for us the myth or symbol of love as Michelangelo imagined that emotion.

In composition, the figure is from all points of view admirable, presenting a series of nobly varied line-harmonies.

All we have to regret is that time, exposure to weather, and vulgar outrage should have spoiled the surface of the marble.
VI It is natural to turn from the Cupid to another work belonging to the English nation, which has recently been ascribed to Michelangelo.

I mean the Madonna, with Christ, S.John, and four attendant male figures, once in the possession of Mr.H.Labouchere, and now in the National Gallery.