Alinari/Art Resource, NY

In this photo, winged infants mimic their elders by acting as winemakers and winesellers. This fresco is from Pompeii’s House of the Vettii, named for the wealthy freedman Augustalis Vettius Conviva, who owned the house when it was destroyed by the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Other frescoes in the house show similar infants, also called cherubs or cupids, engaged in various adult tasks, such as forging iron and selling medicine. The little vintners in the “Cupids as Wine Dealers” fresco decant their wine from amphoras—like the actual amphoras in which Pompeians shipped wine around the Mediterranean and as far as India (compare with photo of the Port of Classe mosaic and drawing of amphoras).