Putto

A putto is the figure of a chubby baby or plump little boy, usually naked and with a pair of wings. The word putto and its plural putti, both pronounced with the vowel in their first syllable identical to that in ‘foot’ or ‘put’, IPA: / iːpʊ toʊ and pʊ tiː/, are used almost exclusively in the discussion of works of art, particularly Renaissance painting and sculpture, and were introduced into English in the seventeenth century from Italian. The Italian word putto, still used in some parts of Italy to mean ‘child’, comes from the Latin putus (‘child’, ‘boy’).