Eros, Inc.: Cupid, Capital, and the Crash of 1720.

In Regency Paris, the triumphant introduction into the economy of mass printed paper currencies coincided with images of equally victorious winged amours (cupids): serialised embodiments, in both cases, of the ascendancy of the flitting and fluttering. Examining works by Charles Coypel, Bernard Picart and others, this essay contextualises the reprisal of the omnia vincit amor theme—the idea of love's inescapable power—alongside the emergence of an equally indomitable financial culture. Amidst the bubble economy engineered by John Law, Amour served as incarnation of more than the salvific and emancipatory promise of a paper economy. Hailed for his 'empire of love', the tyrannical god also asserted the blend of seduction and subjugation practiced by a despotic state that demanded acquiescence: both to its banknotes, and to the purportedly 'soft power' exercised by the government-licensed Company of the Indies over French Louisiana's Indigenous population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]