The statue of Eros, which stands in Piccadilly Circus, is modelled on Angelo Colarossi, who from the ages of 15 to 18 posed for the sculptor Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934) in the artist's Maida Vale studio.
The Colarossis, a Model Family
Angelo came from an artistic family. His uncle Filippo ran the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and his father, also called Angelo, was a well known London artists' model. With the kind of chiselled features and body-builder's physique that was useful in portraying classical figures, Angelo senior can be seen in relief on the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens and on Queen Victoria's statue in front of Buckingham Palace.
He is portrayed as the sailor in John Everett Millais' Boyhood of Raleigh (1870), in which his luxuriant moustache is just visible, and he is the muscular statue in An Athlete Wrestling With a Python (1877) by Frederick, Lord Leighton, who painted Angelos father and son together in the large circular canvas And The Sea Gave Up The Dead Which Were In It (1892), designed for the dome of St Paul's Cathedral and now in the Tate Collection.
Piccadilly Circus Remembers Lord Shaftesbury
Gilbert's commission for a statue in Piccadilly Circus came in 1886 on the completion of Shaftesbury Avenue, a thoroughfare on the northeastern side that had resulted from the clearing of some of the worst slums in London. The street, now the heart of the West End's theatreland, had been named after the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who had died the previous year. A Tory MP, philanthropist and reformer, his charitable work among the poor included the foundation of the Ragged Schools Union.
Anteros, not Eros or Cupid
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, as it is properly called, was unveiled in 1893, and the crowning figure is supposed to represent the Angel of Christian Charity. In fact, it is based not on Eros (Cupid to the Romans), the mischievous Greek god of love and desire, but on his brother, the more steadfast and less random Anteros, god of selfless, requited love. These Erotes were the children of Aphrodite (Venus in Rome), and they are sometimes portrayed in the scales of a balance held by the goddess.
Gilbert was a forward thinking goldsmith and metallurgist, and he had the statue cast in aluminium – the first in London to be made of the metal, according to The London Encyclopedia. With double, butterfly wings and bow in hand, Eros is balanced on the ball of his left foot, tilted forward with his arms outstretched, having just let fly his arrow. Young Angelo was able to maintain this position for up to an hour at a time, he told Picture Post in an interview 54 years after the statue was installed. Published on June 28, 1947, the article celebrated the return of the statue to Piccadilly after it had been removed for safe keeping during World War II.
From God of Love to Solicitor's Clerk
"To be a good model you've got to have feeling and put guts into it," he told the magazine, adding that he regarded Alfred Gilbert as "the greatest artist since Benvenuto Cellini".
Colarossi had married and was living in Feltham, near Heathrow, where he is buried. Photographed in a tie, coloured v-neck sweater, and herringbone jacket, the bespectacled 77-year-old "God of yesterday", who never grew beyond five feet, looked more like the solicitor's managing clerk he had become than the magnificent eight-foot "Eros", God of Love, that for more than a century has been admired by visitors to London.
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