Victorian Cupid Mailbox Valentine Card - Winged Cherub

A fully nude cherub standing on tiptoe to shove a letter into a green mailbox mounted on a wooden post is apparently where we've landed—because the god of love has abandoned his bow and arrow in favor of the postal service. Said bow is slung across his tiny body along with what appears to be a quiver, suggesting he came prepared for violence but pivoted to correspondence at the last minute. Floating ominously in the upper left corner: two red hearts skewered by a single arrow, which in any other context would be a crime scene, but here reads as 'romantic.' The whole composition is aggressively on-the-nose — love, literally delivered — rendered with the kind of unsettling realism that makes you wonder exactly how much the Victorian artist was thinking about toddler anatomy.