Love

Love is perhaps the most depicted of all human emotions, yet it is hard to paint. Artists have shown it as a god with bow and arrow, as fidelity between spouses, as longing and play, and as a kiss that makes time stand still. We follow lovers from the sarcophagi of the Etruscans by way of Watteau, Canova and Klimt to Chagall’s floating couples.

• Eros and Aphrodite – antiquity
• Courtly love – the Middle Ages
• Venus returns – the Renaissance
• Passion and fidelity – the Baroque
• The games of love – the 18th century
• Cupid and Psyche – Neoclassicism and Romanticism
• The kiss – around 1900
• Floating lovers – from Chagall to today