The little fat babies with wings we see depicted in old paintings (and more recently reappearing in animated films such as Disney’s ‘Fantasia’) are not cherubs but ‘putti’. Cherubs are Biblical angels purported to have four faces (of different animals) and several sets of wings. Cherubs are supposed to be terrifying, in this respect making them more akin to Harpies, Valkyrie and some of the deities in the Hindu pantheon.

No, Putti (plural, from ’putto’ singular, the name deriving from the Latin, meaning ‘small boy child’) were non-Christian spirits, said to be able to influence human lives as messengers of the gods (though distinct and more lowly than Hermes or Mercury, who probably had more important things to deliver). This tradition dates back to ancient Rome and Greece. Their role as messengers may explain their connection with notions such as the arrival of love, however, putti are just as likely to appear in funerary works as those based on romance (e.g. Raphael’s Sistine Madonna) so they don’t always bring good news.

Nor are putti cupids. Indeed the whole notion of a cupid is a nonsense as Cupid is of course the name of a deity, according to myth either the son of Venus or, alternatively, her companion.

So next time you are in a shop searching for tokens of a romantic nature make sure you ask for a card with putti on it rather than cherubs. This will be of enormous help to the shop assistants.