Guido Reni was recognized by his contemporaries as a "divine" artist. His works embodied, in the Europe of the time, a perfect ideal of beauty. This painting presents Cupid, god of profane love, blindfolded and tied to a tree. The god of sacred love Anteros, on the opposite side, burns his rival's arrows. It is a moralizing scene that celebrates the triumph of virtuous feeling over carnal love. Already in the eighteenth century, the canvas was kept in the drawing room of Palazzo Spinola where it is still today.