visual representation of love

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Symbolism of Love In Art: How Artists Represent Love And Its Meanings?

Stephanie Ansel

March 26, 2023

Love in Art – Throughout history, art has been used to symbolize and express love.

From the ancient sculptures of Ancient Rome to modern day street graffiti, artists have found ways to represent the emotion we call “love” in a variety of aesthetic forms.

The diversity and complexity of these representations serve as powerful reminders that love is an essential part of life, regardless of time or place.

As an art historian, I am fascinated by how different cultures throughout the ages have expressed their understanding of this most profound emotion through visual language.

In this article, I will discuss some examples of how symbolic expressions of love appear in art from various regions and eras, exploring what they say about our individual and collective understandings of romance and connection.

Table of Contents

Historical Context Of Love In Art

The representation of love in art has a long and varied history.

From the romanticism of the Renaissance to modernist expression, artists have been inspired by this emotion, often conveying its complex meanings through visual metaphors.

Greek mythology, for example, provided Renaissance painters with the subject matter to depict various kinds of love; Venus and Cupid were popular figures in works such as Botticelli’s The Birth Of Venus (1486).

Similarly, during the impressionist period, paintings like Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880) depicted people enjoying life’s pleasures while surrounded by symbols of love and affection.

As we move into more recent times, abstract forms began to express emotive sentiments that could not be articulated otherwise – Jackson Pollock’s drip painting technique exemplified this notion.

Visual Representations Of Love

Love has been represented in many forms throughout the history of art . From Cupid and his arrows to lovers embracing one another, artists have used symbolism to communicate love’s meaning for centuries. Here are some examples of how visual representation is used to express love:

• Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures often depicted gods or goddesses with hearts, flowers, or arrows as symbols of love.
• Renaissance paintings featured cherubs holding wreaths of roses and other objects associated with romantic feelings.
• Contemporary works may use imagery such as a pair of hands forming a heart shape or two people intertwined in an embrace.

No matter what form it takes, visual representations of love allow us to connect with these emotions on a deeper level than words alone can provide.

By exploring artistic expressions that represent our own experiences with love, we gain insight into its power, beauty and complexity – which can help us better understand ourselves and the relationships around us.

Cultural Implications Of Love In Art

Love is a universal emotion that has been expressed in art since ancient times. Art history offers ample evidence of the way different cultures have used symbols to represent love and its meanings throughout the ages.

From cave paintings to contemporary works, artists offer unique interpretations of love in their artwork that reflect its cultural implications.

As seen through these examples, love can be interpreted in many ways depending on the culture it is being viewed from.

For example, while an image of Cupid and Psyche typically represents deathless love in Western European societies, the same image may take on a completely different meaning within a Middle Eastern context.

In this regard, art serves not only as an expression of our feelings but also as a reflection of how different cultures view them.

The symbolism found in art reflects both personal and collective beliefs about relationships and emotions.

By looking closely at historical pieces we are able to gain insight into how past generations saw love, and by comparing it with modern representations we can better understand our own attitudes towards it today.

Whether represented through allegory or abstract forms, each artist’s interpretation provides us with a window into understanding the diverse facets of human experience associated with love.

Love is a universal emotion that has been celebrated in art for centuries. In its various forms, love has served as an inspiration to countless artists who have sought to capture the passion and beauty of this feeling through their works.

From romantic depictions of couples embracing to abstract interpretations expressing the complexities of relationships, artists continue to explore the symbolism of love in their work.

Love can be seen as both personal and collective experiences, transcending time and space, connecting us with each other on a deeper level.

Whether it’s found in Renaissance Madonnas or modern installations, art always provides insight into our deepest emotions and desires – reminding us all why we are so passionate about not only loving others but also ourselves.

Stephanie Ansel is a well-known writer and journalist known for her unique and captivating writing style. She has written many articles and books on important topics such as the lifestyle, environment, hobbies, and technology and has been published in some of the biggest newspapers and magazines. Stephanie is also a friendly and approachable person who loves to talk to people and learn about their stories. Her writing is easy to read and understand, filled with lots of details and information, and is perfect for both kids and adults who want to learn about important topics in an interesting way.

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Famous Love Paintings – Romantic Depictions of Love in Art

Love is one of those feelings that bring out the muse in most people, therefore, it is no surprise that there are so many examples of love in art. Paintings about love try to capture the essence of that feeling that is simultaneously a very personal yet universal experience. Artists have been inspired throughout the centuries to create paintings of love that are able to convey this feeling to other people. Let’s explore the most famous love paintings that have successfully captured this often fleeting feeling!

Table of Contents

• 1.1 The Honeysuckle Bower (c. 1609) by Peter Paul Rubens
• 1.2 The Jewish Bride (1665) by Rembrandt van Rijn
• 1.3 Lovers Walking in the Snow (Crow and Heron) (1772) by Suzuki Harunobo
• 1.4 The Bolt (1777) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
• 1.5 The Kiss (1859) by Francesco Hayez
• 1.6 Chez le Père Lathuille (1879) by Édouard Manet
• 1.7 Dance in the Country (1883) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• 1.8 In Bed, the Kiss (1892) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
• 1.9 The Kiss (1897) by Edvard Munch
• 1.10 The Birthday (1915) by Marc Chagall
• 1.11 Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931) by Frida Kahlo
• 1.12 Figures on a Beach (1931) by Pablo Picasso
• 2.1 Why Do Artists Create Paintings About Love?
• 2.2 What Are the Most Famous Love Paintings?

Exploring the Most Famous Love Paintings

Art about love can be found all around us, as it is a subject that resonates with so many people, whether they may be looking for love, being in love, or yearning for a love that has passed. There are certain paintings of love, however, that have become so influential in popular culture that they deserve further study and appreciation. Today, we shall be focusing on the finest examples of love in art and see what made these works become so renowned.

By finding out more about the artist and circumstances behind these paintings about love, we shall gain a better understanding of their value and influence.

The Honeysuckle Bower (c. 1609) by Peter Paul Rubens

The Honeysuckle Bower is an artwork filled to the brim with marital symbolism that depicts Rubens and Isabella Brant, his first wife. The composition, exquisite details, and color choices in this artwork clearly illustrate that Rubens was the preeminent artist of the Flemish Baroque period. The pair of lovers are seated in a honeysuckle bower encircled by a garden, both of which are traditional representations of love and often appear in romantic artworks.

Another sign of unity and marriage is the lovers holding each other’s right hands. The artist represented himself resting against his sword’s hilt to indicate his rank as a gentleman.  

The oil on canvas painting is now on display in the Munich Pinakothek in Munich, Germany. Over the centuries, the honeysuckle plant has taken on different meanings. The significance that is still linked with the flower started in the Middle Ages. The honeysuckle plant represented the notion of long-lasting pleasure; it also represented perseverance and resilience. This became a common symbol in artworks during Rubens’ lifetime. Around the time the artwork was painted, The Garden of Love was a prominent literary symbol and concept.

The first inspiration may have stemmed from symbols of paradise seen in cloister gardens from the medieval era. Another factor that might have affected this was Roman de la Rose, in addition to the garden’s importance in aristocratic society. Women are portrayed as objects of adoration by their admirers in these scenes, and the garden is filled with pleasure and music. The two figures’ poses are more relaxed and modest in comparison to the noble clothes they are wearing.

The Jewish Bride (1665) by Rembrandt van Rijn

During the early 19th century, a Dutch art dealer characterized the subject of the painting as a Jewish father presenting jewelry to his daughter on her wedding day. While the names of the two people are unknown today, most art historians assume they are actually Rebecca and Isaac from the Old Testament. Of course, the picture is not an accurate depiction of a Jewish bride from the Bible, but rather a beautiful, exotic depiction of a cultural ceremony that was outside the experience of a primarily Christian way of life.

Whether or not Rembrandt meant it as a simple work of Biblical art, there is little question that he was expressing an intimate interaction between his two characters.

In line with the contemporary aesthetics of Protestant Reformation Art, as the man lays his hand on her bosom, she moves instinctively to defend her modesty. Nonetheless, both show signs of affection for each other, making this far from a usual seduction scene.

The figures are large but flattened, as they so often appear in his later period, offering a screen for many overlapping brushstrokes of scarlet and gold, the intensity of the colors increasing or decreasing as they pass out of or into the light. Despite the passion and affection, this is not a completely pleasant picture. Maybe because Rembrandt himself was under physical duress in his life and work. Isaac seems to have low expectations, as though he is unsure what the future holds, whilst Rebecca seems contemplative, almost preoccupied.

Lovers Walking in the Snow (Crow and Heron) (1772) by Suzuki Harunobo

This lover’s print is the most romantic and depressing of all those depicting lovers in ukiyo-e. The artist has effectively shown the close bond of the couple of lovers wandering through the snow, even implying a michiyuki, or route to a romantic suicide. In what is known as an ai ai gasa stance, which literally translates to “sharing the use of an umbrella and love”, the pair strolls beside one another while the snow gently falls.

The creator of the polychrome print, Harunobu, also known as nishiki-e, demonstrates his command of color by depicting the couple’s robes in paired white and black, which are referred to as “crow and heron.”

He embellishes the inner robes and the obi of either figure with intricate polychrome motifs in contrast to the basic hues. The woman’s kimono and hood designs, as well as the delicate, flaky texture of the snow, are highlighted by embossing. This print is an early rendition of the design, which was later re-engraved either during Harunobu’s lifetime or shortly thereafter with minor modifications.

The Bolt (1777) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

In the Rococo period, the painting style evolved into something more flamboyant and energetic, with curved lines, floral patterns, and pastel hues. The new styles and subject matter in paintings echoed the 18th century’s libertine mentality, which focused on the pleasures of the body and hedonism. Artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard was one of its most prominent exponents.

The artwork depicts a decisive moment in a romantic relationship. It portrays a couple in a kind of ecstatic trance, with the male locking the bedroom door.

The thick ruby-colored drapes that fall over the bed intensify the passionate ambiance, with stage lights spotlighting the pair of lovers. Rococo art , which was focused on love, frequently reproduced the same scenic arrangement, where the world and time seemed to halt, depicting a passionate scene of romantic embrace. Fragonard began by drawing sketches of the painting. It is believed that the artwork may have been inspired by literary works of his time and that models were most likely used for the poses. It was said that Boccaccio, Ariosto, and La Fontaine were his inspirations.

The Kiss (1859) by Francesco Hayez

The painting depicts a medieval couple kissing one other while embracing. It is one of the most intense and vivid depictions of a kiss in Western art history. The woman leans back, as the man extends his left leg in order to support her, resting his foot on the step as if ready to depart at any moment. Although the pair is in the center of the picture, they are unrecognizable because Hayez intended their act of kissing to be at the heart of the arrangement. Shadows lurk in the corner of the left side of the painting, conveying a feeling of danger and conspiracy. Following Napoleonic France’s defeat in the 19th century, the Congress of Vienna convened in 1815 to rebuild the map of Europe.

Italy had a minor role in comparison to other European countries and was set to be partitioned into various states. The Habsburgs either directly dominated or heavily influenced every state. This fragmentation stood against the rising nationalist desire for Italy’s union, resulting in the formation of secret societies with democratic-radical leanings, such as Young Italy and the Carboneria. Francesco Hayez created this artwork during this time period.

Aware of the deadly persecution of the nationalist movement, Hayez chose to hide the concepts of conspiracy and resistance against the invaders as a depiction of historical events. The artist was able to circumvent censorship by using perplexing and ambiguous analogies.  

Count Alfonso Maria Visconti of Saliceto commissioned the painting. The Count commissioned Hayez to illustrate the hopes connected to the Kingdom of Sardinia’s partnership with France. Although the immediate focus is a passionate interaction between two lovers shown as medieval characters, the artwork conceals symbolic parallels to Risorgimento Italian nationalist ideas. The man in the artwork is a national patriot who struggled against Habsburg authority following the loss of Italy’s first battle of independence in 1848. This is indicated by a dagger hidden in his robe and the color scheme of blues and reds, which refers to the French flag. In the war for freedom, France sided with Italy, and the work of art was Hayez’s way of expressing admiration to the ally.

Chez le Père Lathuille (1879) by Édouard Manet

This painting was executed in the bistro Pere Lathuille, which is located near the Clichy tollhouse. Manet’s restaurant was located off the Avenue de Clichy, near the Guerbois. Mile French stepped in for the initial model, Ellen Andree when she had to take some time off from the sittings. M. Gauthier-Lathuille, the proprietor’s son, is the young gentleman in the painting. The young man had met Manet at the restaurant while working as one of the waiters. Manet thought the man was quite pleasant and well-dressed.

In this painting, the young man is portrayed staring lovingly into the eyes of the young woman seated next to him.

The painting depicts a prosperous golden period for the French, with lush plants and striking architecture. The model was portrayed in classically luxurious clothing, displaying French vintage fashion. She’s wearing a hat, lace gloves, and a white fluffy scarf.

Dance in the Country (1883) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The merchant Paul Durand-Ruel commissioned this work of art in 1882 because he wanted paintings based on the topic of the ball. He purchased it in 1886, first displayed it in April 1883, and continued to care for it until Renoir’s death in 1919. Renoir also produced two complementing paintings on the same topic that year, Dance at Bougival and Dance in the City . The artwork was motivated by the artist’s journey to Italy in 1881, where he drew much influence from Raphael . It demonstrated the development of the artist, who attempted to move away from the Impressionistic style of the time.

The artwork portrays two people dancing under a chestnut tree: the male figure is Paul Lhôte, the artist’s acquaintance, and the lady is Aline Charigot, the artist’s wife.

Both characters are painted life-size and practically take up the entire canvas. However, a table can be seen in the background on the right, as well as the hat on the ground and a couple of faces below the dance floor level. The woman, who is holding a fan in her right hand, is smiling and looking at the observer. The scenario is covered in a bright and positive atmosphere, and the women’s clothing has warm hues like a red hat and yellow gloves

In Bed, the Kiss (1892) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a post-Impressionist artist, is well-known for his depictions of the beautiful, thrilling, and frequently racy Parisian life of the late 19th century. This piece is no exception: it depicts two ladies in bed in a passionate embrace. Even if people had come to anticipate such displays of sexuality from Toulouse-Lautrec, this kind of situation would have been shocking to audiences of his time as lesbianism was not generally accepted in society.

Toulouse-Lautrec was inspired by the darker sides of Parisian nightlife, such as clubs, cabarets, and brothels. This painting is thought to portray ladies working in a brothel.

Brothels often didn’t have the space to accommodate all of their prostitutes, compelling them to share beds. This often ended in deep friendships and even sexual connections developing between them, which might have been the situation for the two women depicted here by Toulouse-Lautrec.

The work of art has received praise for its ability to depict an intense bond between the two, who seem unaware of their artist and unconcerned about the criticisms that their society could pass on them if their relationship were revealed. They are completely immersed in each other, and the observer gets the impression that at the moment recorded by Toulouse-Lautrec, they have no problems other than the time they are spending together. The artwork illuminates the pair with vivid tones of yellow and red, with more subdued shades of blue , gray, and green surrounding them.

The Kiss (1897) by Edvard Munch

Munch made multiple paintings in a similar vein, including The Kiss , and displayed them together in a show he named The Frieze of Life . The series’ themes included death, love, sex, anxiety, adultery, jealousy, and the phases of life, as well as the iconic picture The Scream .

Munch never married, and “The Kiss”‘s somber atmosphere reflects Munch’s ambivalence toward romance. It’s nearly hard to tell the two characters apart, especially when their features meet and merge in the artwork.

According to Reinhold Heller, the art historian, the representation of the lovers represents their oneness while also foreshadowing a dangerous demise of individuality, an erosion of one’s own identity and existence that alludes to death. This topic is represented by four different woodcuts. The Kiss I and The Kiss II were among Munch’s first woodcuts, originally released in 1897. The Kiss III debuted in 1898, followed by The Kiss IV in 1902. The artist adjusts the details of the backdrop in each example by employing different blocks that have been slightly adjusted.

The Birthday (1915) by Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall referred to the word “love” as the primary color in his works of art. Bella, his wife, was the main source of affection in his life. They first met while Bella was still a teenager in Vitebsk, Belarus. Despite the disapproval of her parents, who desired a better marriage for their daughter, Chagall married Bella in 1915. Chagall created this piece in 1915, only a few weeks before he married Bella.

It is a great depiction of these two’s incredible, flowing, and overpowering love. Chagall is seen hovering above Bella, floating in a dreamlike state.

As he bends around to kiss his future wife on the lips, his head is unnaturally craned upside down and backward. Bella is shown carrying a bouquet of flowers and posed as if about to take flight. In a bright living room environment dominated by a vibrant red carpet, the pair is suspended in loving ecstasy. The beige, ivory, and tans of the furniture and wall decorations of the living room complement the artwork. The painting is a magnificent work of art that vividly communicates the sensation of ecstatic love between young lovers in a pleasant yet ordinary scene that appears to exude happiness from every square inch of the work of art.

Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931) by Frida Kahlo

Frida represents herself as small and insignificant in comparison to her huge husband portrayed with his palette. This represents not just their physical differences, but also a self-portrait as a wife in the shadow of a renowned artist. The strange power balance that one can observe inside this artwork is potentially disconcerting. Kahlo seems to be portraying that she is only a little part of her husband’s life and that he has to be independent.

Her relative stature is likewise exaggerated to emphasize the power disparity. Her own creative accomplishments and traits are overlooked in this work, with the sole artistic references alluding to her new spouse.

Kahlo met 42-year-old Diego Rivera, a famous artist, and revolutionary leader, in 1928. He recognized her artistic talents and the two of them married the next year. The couple then relocated to Cuernavaca. Kahlo started to be impacted by traditional Mexican culture there, both in her work and her clothing. Their tumultuous relationship would go on to influence much of Kahlo’s art.

Figures on a Beach (1931) by Pablo Picasso

In the summer of 1931, Picasso created a series of weird sexual beach images, including this one, in his French Riviera holiday resort of Juan-les-Pins. The grotesque character of the portrayed shapes said to be motivated by the artist’s affair with Marie-Therese Walter, a 19-year-old model, reduced this moment of intimacy to a kind of crudity, arguably more indicative of his worsening relationship with his wife, Olga. The two figures’ praying mantis-like heads were popular with Surrealists because the twisted thought of the female bug consuming her husband after intercourse imparted another visual representation of the ‘life and death’ dilemma.

Picasso’s grotesque vagina dentata teeth visuals, as well as penile tongues, are included in these heads.

The indirect and satirical allusion to classicism is balanced by parallels to modern Surrealist painting , particularly the monster figure paintings of Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, both of whom were masters of the grotesque like Picasso. This artwork may have been influenced by the paintings of both Surrealists, but the connections with Dali are arguably more striking. This artwork’s reductive and simplified style is a far cry from Dali’s pseudo-academic polish, illusionistic tricks, and miniaturist focus on detail, however, Picasso would have been open to the absurd pairing of ridiculous psychoanalytical imagery with a seemingly traditional style.

With that, we wrap up our list of the most famous love paintings. From the 1600s all the way to the 1930s, these examples of art about love range from the beautiful to the bizarre. Some of these paintings about love represent an innocent and sweet kind of love, while others seem to be more about lust and infatuation. As we can see, love in art can be expressed in a multitude of different ways. Which would you say is your favorite painting about love?

Take a look at our love paintings webstory here!

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do artists create paintings about love.

Throughout the years, artists have sought to capture the most fundamental of human emotions, and love is no doubt one of the strongest emotions that humans can experience. Artists are able to depict the feeling of love by using certain colors and poses that remind one of the beauty and level of affection that people experience when they are in love. Each artist manages to portray that special feeling in a unique way, using the preferred techniques and styles that they are so renowned for. Today, we have an abundance of art about love all around us, from Hallmark cards to magnificent works of art, and each offers a unique look at the various aspects of being in love.

What Are the Most Famous Love Paintings?

Throughout the history of art, countless amazing artworks about love have been produced. Despite this seemingly endless array of works to choose from, there are a few that have stood out from the rest and have gained a reputation through the following centuries or decades. An early example of such an artwork is The Honeysuckle Bower (c. 1609) by Peter Paul Rubens. This artwork is said to be loaded with symbolism related to marriage. A rather modern depiction of love is Picasso’s Figures on a Beach (1931), which illustrates the artist being intimate with a 19-year-old model.

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Isabella, Meyer, “Famous Love Paintings – Romantic Depictions of Love in Art.” Art in Context. July 25, 2023. URL: https://artincontext.org/famous-love-paintings/

Meyer, I. (2023, 25 July). Famous Love Paintings – Romantic Depictions of Love in Art. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/famous-love-paintings/

Meyer, Isabella. “Famous Love Paintings – Romantic Depictions of Love in Art.” Art in Context , July 25, 2023. https://artincontext.org/famous-love-paintings/ .

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The Most Famous Artists and Artworks

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors…in all of history! 

MOST FAMOUS ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors!

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The 10 best love paintings

In honour of Valentine’s Day, cast your adoring eyes over the sweetest representations of romance – and its dark sides – on canvas

1 | Rembrandt The Jewish Bride (c1666)

Love is patient, love is kind: this is the visual embodiment of those great verses from Corinthians so often read at weddings. Rembrandt’s masterpiece is loving in its every brushstroke. About his young couple we know very little – who they were, whether she was a bride, whether they were actually Jewish – but this image goes beyond portraiture in any case. Their faces are radiant with adoration. Their gestures are beautiful: his hand gently placed on her breast, hers tenderly covering it. They are themselves on that day, and yet universal. The painting is a kind of secular altarpiece, an inspiration to patience, humility and love.

2 | Rubens The Honeysuckle Bower (c1609)

Just back from honeymoon, Rubens sits hand-in-hand with his new young wife, Isabella Brant, among the honeysuckle blossom. She smiles her famously sweet smile; he leans back, legs crossed and relaxed. Everything in the garden is flourishing; and these two are secure in each other’s love. It is well known that they were perfectly matched (Rubens, a gifted writer, left eloquent letters praising Isabella’s serene good humour). Where so many 17th-century marriage portraits were rigidly formal, the historic record of a contract, this one is fluent, conversational and sensuous. The lovers incline together in all respects.

3 | Watteau

The Surprise (c1718)

In a glade, as the sun fades, with the promise of night to come, a musician sits strumming only inches away from a young couple locked in a passionate clinch. They are so rapt in their diagonal embrace – whose limbs are whose in this shudder of red and white satin? – they scarcely seem aware of this uncomfortably close spectator. Perhaps music is the food of love for them, or perhaps they are so hungry for each other they don’t hear him at all. The musician seems to show us what he (and perhaps the viewer) lacks. He’s one of Watteau’s semi-tragic observers.

4 | Renoir Dance in the Country (1883)

Renoir’s lovers are swept away by music, dance and summer’s heat – and by each other. Their al fresco meal has been abandoned in disarray; a hat (his?) has tumbled to the ground; and she’s only just managing to keep hold of her fan as he grasps her by the wrist and waist. The whole painting seems to sway. And the crowning glory of this beautifully soft and sultry composition, with the hint of feather beds to come, is the smile on the girl’s lovely face. Candidly directed straight towards the viewer, it says that she couldn’t be happier.

5 | Klimt The Kiss (1908)

Wrapped up in each other, the lovers are enfolded in their everlasting kiss. Their love is out of this world (the only location is this ethereal meadow of rich cloth and jewel-bright paint) and even a little celestial: their heads are haloed in gold leaf. There’s no sense of bodies beneath all this opulence, except for her elegant toes. Bare feet, flowers in their hair: no wonder hippies loved Klimt’s masterpiece and it remains the most famous kiss in painting. A perfect square of a canvas, a perfect fit of a couple: it is just what young lovers often feel, dovetailed together in their kiss as the world dissolves into a shimmer around them.

6 | Chagall The Birthday (1915)

Love lifts them up so their feet scarcely touch the ground. Sweeping down like a comet, or an angel, he bends over backwards to kiss her. Chagall will soon be married to the teenage Bella, his beloved muse, and so the gravity-defying strength of their partnership begins. This is a vision of wild and sensual love, but also of transcendent adoration. The shawl-draped room is a kind of shrine. Chagall wrote of his future wife: “I had only to open my window and blue air, love and flowers entered in with her.”

7 | Magritte The Lovers (1928)

A blind date? Two lovers are trying to kiss through their separate grey hoods, lips never meeting, the cloth dry and suffocating on the tongue. They cannot see each other, they cannot feel each other and they cannot even kiss: it’s a masterpiece of sexual frustration. But the cornice above their heads suggests the bourgeois imprisonment of a couple glued together by convention yet also blocked by each other. Perhaps they don’t know each other at all. It’s the nightmare of a lonely relationship. Those hoods could double as shrouds.

8 | Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (1943)

This double portrait was begun in the late summer of 1940 after the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera divorced. As so often, Kahlo makes metaphor literal. Diego is on her mind, tattooed on her brain, locked inside her head despite all the agony of his extramarital affairs. She cannot stop thinking about him. She wears the traditional Mexican costume he loved and a crown of leaves that seems to spread like a web, as if Kahlo was trapped in both the picture and the obsession. But that was not the end of their love. By the time the picture was finished, in 1943, they had remarried.

9 | Stanley Spencer The Resurrection: Reunion (1945)

When it is all over in this world, what next? Larkin says all that survives of us is love , but in Stanley Spencer’s wondrous (and homely) vision of the Resurrection based on Port Glasgow cemetery, this love is not just some poetic notion but a great full-body hug. The lovers in the foreground, seen embracing against what looks like a gigantic Love Heart sweet, suitably inscribed, are brought back to life in the moment of a kiss. We will see each other again and our love will never die. It might be what we all hope for… and after all, who knows?

10 | Robert Indiana Love (1965)

The word spells love. But the picture is far more than a word. That lovely round O, beside the upright L and carried by the bracing E, takes on a bodily form. It swoons, it leans, its head has been turned. It flirts. It has been knocked sideways by love. The American pop artist Robert Indiana created a pure and concentrated modern pictogram with this surpassingly famous painting, lettered in the colour of love against a blue and green landscape. The image has sold by the million, a valentine for our age. Love – what else matters?

• The 10 best ...
• Valentine's Day
• René Magritte
• Marc Chagall
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Jean-Antoine Watteau

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How Art Captures Feelings of Love & Hate Through Art History

Claus de Werve, Virgin and Child , c. 1415 - 17. Limestone with paint and gilding. 53 3/8 x 41 1/8 x 27 in.

Envy, lust, love, anger, happiness, sadness, fear , jealousy. In one word: Feelings. Some say they are what make us human, others spend their lives learning not to be dominated by them. Whether you side with the former or the latter, it is undeniable that feelings are one of the most fascinating aspects of life. How do we, as humans, express them? Thanks to the forty-two muscles in our faces, we can convey an incredible number of emotions—more than 10,000.

And yet, researchers estimate that there are only six universally recognized facial expressions: fear, anger, disgust, happiness, and sadness. Recent studies—such as those conducted by the American sociologist Arlie R. Hochschild—illustrate that emotions are social products. This means that each culture will have its own variations and blueprints to guide how we manage and express feelings within our own communities.

From the Mesopotamian and Egyptian statues of gods with impassive and dignified expressions to Caravaggio’s drama, artists have long been exploring human feelings through a variety of media and different perspectives.

Love and anger, opposite as well as complementary forces, provide us with some of the most captivating examples of the representation of emotions through art.

Love can take many forms: it can be the affection between parents and children, the passion of two lovers , or, for those who believe, it can take the form of faith. Among the most famous paintings on love is  Birthday by the early Modernist Marc Chagall  (1887-1985).

Marc Chagall,  Birthday , 1915. Oil on cardboard. 31 3/4 x 39 1/4 in.

The painting shows Chagall and his then-wife-to-be Bella a few weeks before their marriage. The setting is ordinary. A bright living room holds everyday objects that are easily recognizable: a cake, cups, a money purse.

Chagall kisses Bella while floating over her. She holds a bouquet of flowers and seems to be just taking off. Chagall’s closed eyes, the saturated colors, and the dream-like portrayal of an ordinary day tell us how love should make us feel: Head over heels, floating in an unremarkable room, perhaps even holding some flowers.

A different yet equally powerful and intimate representation of love was attributed to the Netherlandish sculptor Claus de Werve (c. 1380-1439) with his Virgin and Child.

Detail of Biblical script in Claus de Werve's Virgin and Child.

At first glance, the scene also appears ordinary, just a mother and her child reading together. Baby Jesus looks up towards Mary, while she protectively wraps her arm around him. It is primarily a depiction of parental love, but notes of love as faith can also be detected.

The theological theme—Jesus as God incarnate and Mary, the vessel that birthed him—is revealed by a Latin inscription on the bench taken from the Book of Ecclesiasticus “From the beginning, and before the word, was I created.”

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Rage of Achilles , 1757. Fresco. Villa Valmarana ai Nani.

Anger can be born out of jealousy, the desire for revenge, envy, or injustice. One of the most fascinating examples of anger and its consequences is the Iliad , the famous ancient Greek epic poem, that begins with the word μῆνιν (menin) , wrath. The anger belongs to Achilles, the greatest of all Greek warriors, who had been insulted and humiliated by Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. The king demanded the relinquishment of Achilles’s war prize, the slave Briseis, in order to take her for himself.

Giambattista Tiepolo’s The Rage of Achilles (1757) is a fresco located at Villa Valmarana ai Nani in Vicenza, Italy, that explores the effect of anger on the warrior. The scene depicts an enraged Achilles flinging himself towards Agamemnon. Achilles draws his sword, but the goddess of war and wisdom, Minerva, grabs him by his hair and holds him back. Achilles’ corrugated brows and contracted muscles suggest the coexistence of the anger towards his enemy and the surprise caused by Minerva’s actions.

Recently, portrayals of enraged women have been used to challenge the assumption that anger does not belong in the female world. Traditionally, artists have depicted irate women as monsters—for instance, Medusa or the Sphinx—a convention that contributed to the idea that angry women are ugly, hysterical, or simply ridiculous. The wrath and revenge of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1620) is arguably one of the best examples of the artist’s catharsis through anger.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Truth Coming Out of Her Well , 1896. Oil on canvas.

An 1896 painting by Jean-Leon Gérôme depicts the allegory of Truth entitled,  Truth Coming Out of Her Well.  Truth is rendered as a naked, angry, and screaming woman who emerges from a well holding a whip in her hand, ready to chastise mankind. The anger is palpable and her nudity does not suggest lust, but power and strength. It is possibly inspired by the saying, “The naked truth.”

Once again art comes to our rescue. Whether we’re feeling enraged like Truth or in love like Chagall and Bella, we can take comfort in the fact that we have not been the first and we won’t be the last. Artists have always used their talents and portrayed these feelings. In turn, we can be inspired, moved, or confused. Alas! More feelings.  

Caterina Bellinetti

Dr. Caterina Bellinetti is an art historian specialised in photography and Chinese visual propaganda and culture.

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12 symbols of love found in art history [infographic].

by Lindsay Shapka in Art , Art History , Artists

Throughout history, cultures around the world have used an array of different symbols to depict love and affection, many of which ended up appearing in their art. Some representations, like the Irish claddagh, the harp, and the apple derive from ancient mythology and cultural folklore.

Invaluable created an infographic that explores these decorated symbols of love that go beyond the traditional hearts, roses, and chocolates. You may be surprised at how many of these symbols are still used today, in industries and disciplines including the visual and performing arts, antiques — even greeting cards!

Sources:  Forbes  |  SlideShare  |  Fact Retriever  |  Ancient Pages  |  ThoughtCo.  |  Keen

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Art and love

Taking a look at Tate’s collection , we reimagine what ‘love’ can mean.

When many people think of the word ‘love’, they instinctively imagine the romance of fairytales; passionate, glamorous, uncomplicated love. The reality of it may look pretty different. The types of love we feel are as varied as the people who experience it, as is the art that explores this theme.

Wolfgang Tillmans I don’t want to get over you (2000) Tate

© Wolfgang Tillmans, courtesy Maureen Paley, London

Winner of 2000’s Turner Prize , Wolfgang Tillmans , is known for his raw glimpses of youth culture and his abstract colour photography . I don’t want to get over you was titled after the 1999 track by The Magnetic Fields. Like this tune, the artless accessibility of Tillman’s work, with its light colours, and beautiful forms, is a kind of love song:

It’s an intuitive process… I need to kind of bond with the material that I’m using… over time I develop a sense of…  how to filter to get the color I want, or time the exposure exactly, or make a movement quick enough so that the paper doesn’t get too dark. So it is a very physical thing; and I love this sheet of paper itself, this lush, crisp thing. American Suburb X

Masahisa Fukase From Window  1974 © Masahisa Fukase Archives. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery.

Masahisa Fukase From Window 1974 © Masahisa Fukase Archives. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery.

Masahisa Fukase From Window  1974

© Masahisa Fukase Archives. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery

© Masahisa Fukase Archives. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"

Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Untitled” (Double Portrait) (1991) Tate

© The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York

For this piece, Felix Gonzalez-Torres , stacked one hundred sheets of paper, each with two circles printed in the centre. The work was originally placed on the floor in the gallery and viewers were invited to take away a page. The printed image is a simple representation of two people brought together by love. This ‘anti-monument’ which dwindles and is then replenished repeatedly, symbolises the feelings of loss and new love which people experience everyday.

Complicated

Ron Mueck Spooning Couple (2005) ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland

© Ron Mueck

Ron Mueck leaves no detail to the imagination when reproducing the human form, often playing with scale to distort our expectations. However, his work is not merely physical; the body language of his sculptures is supercharged with emotion. In Spooning Couple , Mueck immortalises that fatal breakdown of communication  between two people. The pairs’ awkward nakedness and vulnerability turns us into voyeurs of humanity’s most private state — unhappiness.

Chris Killip Couple eating fish and chips, Whitley Bay, Tyneside (1976, printed 2010) Tate

© Chris Killip

Throughout the hardship of 1980’s Britain under Margaret Thatcher, Chris Killip’ s work is a beacon of humanity. There is a strong political undercurrent to much of his imagery, as he documents a working class society surviving through the roughest of times. Yet, this is uplifted by photographs of total normality; regular people, doing regular tasks and enjoying each other’s company. He shows us that love is not always pretty, but can be beautifully ordinary.

Wearing nothing but a giant pair of medical pants, Julie clutches her newborn baby and looks into the camera. Rineke Dijkstra ’s photographs of women after giving birth are a profound, intimate documentation of love in its most primal form:

It’s amazing how they trust me, and I think that afterwards they understand that these photos are about something universal and that it’s not particularly about them…a lot of women came to me and said, you know it’s really great that you make these photographs because it’s really the way it is but nobody ever shows it, and I can recognise myself in it. And the men were all like, you can’t show a woman like that. Cruel + Tender  2003. 

Perhaps Peggy Guggenheim sums it up better than we ever could: ‘It [is] all about art and love’ 

• Browse ‘love’ in the Tate Collection

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8 Artworks You Need To Know About the Complexity of Love

Many teachers look forward to assembling valentines and decorating their classrooms with hearts as February approaches. You may even be excited to carry on traditions you loved when you were in grade school! Since becoming a billion-dollar industry , Valentine’s Day is considered by some to be a frivolous “Hallmark holiday” rather than a day dedicated to romance or one true to its unsettling origins , but for students, it can always be a nice reason to focus on activities centered around love and kindness.

If you want to shake up your annual holiday traditions, try incorporating contemporary art in your lessons to guide discussion with your advanced secondary students, or view current artists’ work to inform and stretch your personal artistic knowledge base. Because of technology, the artists of today are speaking in real time to a wider, more diverse audience than ever before. Contemporary artists can teach us life lessons, prompt questions, and inspire creativity. With themes ranging from conceptual love to self-love and LGBTQ+ love, we can understand more about ourselves and each other through visual art’s increasingly humanizing and inclusive lens.

Here are 8 artworks that center on the concept of love.

Note: Be sure to browse each artist’s website and work before deciding what is appropriate to show and discuss with your advanced secondary students. Adhere to your district’s guidelines and consider your students’ age levels.

1. Felix Gonzalez-Torres , Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , 1991

This conceptual work of art captures the rhythm of long-term love and its fickle nature with elegant simplicity. Stephen Jones, Associate Vice President of Post-War & Contemporary Art at Christie’s New York, explains this piece’s connection between time and the “ enduring nature of love .” The clocks are originally set to the same time. Over time, the clocks fall out of sequence. The clocks are then reset to the same time again.

Discussion Questions: Think of a person you love. How do you feel when you are in alignment with them? How do you feel when you struggle to get on the same page with them?

2. Kerry James Marshall , Untitled (Vignette) , 2012

This perfectly pink acrylic painting is reminiscent of a love note embellished with glitter and adorned with heart-shaped music notes surrounding a kissing couple. Writer Abby Martin Greenbaum praises Marshall for his “unequivocal celebration of love and romance in the black community” through his work. It’s fun to see love openly embraced and unmistakably depicted. The feeling is contagious and entices the viewer to want to be where the subject is.

Discussion Questions: When was a time you felt fully present in the moment with another person? Describe a time when nothing else mattered and you paid no attention to the world around you.

3. Jess T. Dugan , SueZie, 51, and Cheryl, 55, Valrico, FL , 2015

Storytelling through photography can be especially evocative. Telling the stories of others through a lens of love is a powerful way to connect. In this piece, photographer Jess T. Dugan employs their perspective as a queer, non-binary person. They describe their approach by offering this insight : “storytelling leads to empathy, knowledge, and understanding. I want viewers of my work to see queer people, and queer love, the way that I do: expansive, beautiful, tender, creative, and authentic.”

Discussion Questions: What does it mean to you to be authentic in life and love? What about in your artwork? How can you tell stories through photography or still images?

4. Peter Hujar , David Wojnarowicz Reclining (II) , 1981

Peter Hujar is another photographer, well-known for his striking, pared-down, black-and-white photos. He is also known for his political activism during the ’70s and ’80s. His ability to create familiarity and closeness in his photos comes from his technical expertise and from the cultivation of his relationships since many of his subjects were close friends or lovers.

Discussion Questions: How might you visually represent love ? What choices might you use to show the familiarity and closeness between yourself and your subject? What body poses can evoke intimacy with the viewer? How does Hujar accomplish this?

5. Gisela McDaniel , Tiningo’ si Sirena , 2021

Love is a complicated emotion that inhabits many aspects of the human condition. Both positive and negative life experiences involve love, from birth, growth, and death to one’s aspirations, setbacks, achievements, and even healing. Gisela McDaniel is an Indigenous Chamorro artist who paints as a way to process the trauma she has experienced. Her artwork aims to support the journeys of other female and non-binary survivors of violence and oppression.

Discussion Questions: How can artmaking be an act of love? How can the process of creation help a person heal?

6. Jim Dine , The Beast , 1999

There is no representation more iconic for love than a heart. Jim Dine is most notable for incorporating the shape in his artworks. He uses it as a template for expressing his emotions through layered color, brushstrokes, and composition. There is a sense of energy, dimension, and fullness to The Beast . Dine clarified the relationship between his heart paintings and Valentine’s Day by saying that as a child, he liked the holiday, “not because I was in love, necessarily, but because I liked the redness of it.”

Discussion Questions: What are you passionate about? What inspires your creations? What recurring ideas or symbols do you represent through your artwork?

7. Shoog McDaniel , Take Up Space , 2019

This neon mixed-media work by Shoog McDaniel is meant to be seen. Its bright glow against the dark frame reminds us of signs we might encounter on a downtown city corner. Coupled with its commanding title, Take Up Space , this depiction of a reclining, seemingly nude figure, only generates more questions.

This ode to self-love, along with Shoog’s photographic artwork, “makes other people humanize the people that they may be hating on, because love is a universal feeling,” McDaniel explains . “I was feeling not really seen, being a fat, trans, queer person, and not a stereotypical lesbian or gay man, and I realized there’s space for me.”

Discussion Questions: When it comes to self-love, what makes you feel seen? How do you practice self-love? How can scale influence the meaning of an artwork? How can art provide space for you to be seen and heard?

8. Patricia Cronin , Memorial to a Marriage , 2002

Patricia Cronin’s larger-than-life-size marble monument is “ the first and only marriage equality monument in the world .” The sculpture depicts a same-sex couple tenderly embracing, lying in bed. This is monumental not only in terms of its size but in concept. “ American society did not recognize LGBTQ+ people legally in terms of their right to practice marriage until 2015 ,” which is thirteen years after Cronin created this piece.

Discussion Questions: How can you speak or show your opinion, especially when it is not popular to do so? How can art be offensive to some, yet persuasive to others?

Leveraging contemporary art is one surefire way to facilitate discussion about the many aspects of love. It can also enrich classroom conversation around Valentine’s Day. Incorporating more contemporary pieces can allow advanced secondary students to value different experiences and can help them reflect on big questions surrounding big feelings. Today’s artists are challenging how love is represented in their works of art in front of a larger audience than ever before. Their inspiring work is an excellent tool for connecting with mature students and discussing the complex yet universal topic of love.

For more contemporary artists to share with your advanced secondary students, check out this compilation article . For strategies to teach advanced learners, watch the Pack,  Working with Advanced Students in PRO Learning . F or tips on how to create artwork about difficult topics, take a look at the Pack,  Creating Meaningful Work About Difficult Topics in PRO Learning .

How do you approach Valentine’s Day in your art room?

How do you use art to discuss complex topics such as love with your advanced secondary students?

Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Andrea Wlodarczyk

Andrea Wlodarczyk, a former middle school art educator, is a former AOEU Writer. She is a deep believer that the art room can be a brave space for students to collaborate across cultures, languages, academics, and socioeconomics and celebrate self-expression and diversity through community.

The Ultimate Guide to Project-Based Learning in Your Art Room: 3 Benefits and 5 Steps

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Love Images

• First Online: 31 July 2019

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• Marcel Danesi 3  

Part of the book series: Semiotics and Popular Culture ((SEMPC))

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The semiotic analysis of sculptures, paintings, and photographs constitutes yet another source for deciphering the meanings of love. The philosopher Plotinus claimed that art revealed the true nature of an object more accurately than just viewing it with the eyes, raising our experience of the mundane to a contemplation of universal truths. This is certainly true of the visual representations of love. Indeed, of all the grand visions conjured up by the human imagination, few captivate us more than the moment when lovers lock in an intimate embrace or a passionate kiss, as in the great kiss sculpture by Rodin, which recounts visually the medieval story of the star-crossed lovers, Paolo and Francesca, as well as capturing the intensity of their love through an indelible yet fatalistic embrace cast into marble. The painters and sculptors who have made love the object of their art are among the greatest of all time, from the ancient anonymous sculptors to Titian, Rodin, Hayez, and even the pop artists, to mention but a handful. They have left us a powerful “pictography” of love that speaks to our eyes and heart directly. The purpose of this chapter is to describe this pictography. The history of love as documented in images is intertwined with the history of entire societies. The ancient Greek sculptures portrayed love gods goddesses as powerful and defiant, and as founders of their worlds. From Aphrodite and Adonis to the mischievous love satyrs and nymphs, we have before us a powerful visual almanac of how love and sex have stimulated the imagination of artists from the dawn of history.

Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. —Chuck Klosterman (b. 1972)

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Cited in David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace, The Book of Lists (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2004), p. 22.

Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (London: Bloomsbury, 2009).

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Danesi, M. (2019). Love Images. In: The Semiotics of Love. Semiotics and Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18111-6_5

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Symbols For Love & Their Meanings: A Guide to Romantic Icons

Love is a universal feeling that has been expressed in various forms throughout history. One of the most common ways to symbolize love is through the use of love symbols.

These symbols have been used in art, literature, poetry, and other forms of communication for centuries. In this article, you will learn about 13 symbols for love and their meanings.

Love symbols have different meanings and significance across different cultures and periods. Some symbols have been used for centuries, while others are relatively new.

The rose is one of the most popular symbols of love, dating back to ancient Rome. It has been used in various forms of communication to symbolize love and romance.

Key Takeaways

• Love symbols have been used for centuries to express love and romance in various forms of communication.
• Different love symbols have different meanings and significance across different cultures and time periods.
• The rose is one of the most popular symbols of love, dating back to ancient Rome.

Historical Perspectives on Love Symbols

When it comes to love, symbols have been used for centuries to express feelings of affection, passion, and deep emotional connection. In this section, we will explore the historical perspectives on love symbols, looking at ancient civilizations and mythological roots.

Ancient Civilizations

Love symbols have been present in many ancient civilizations throughout history. In ancient Egypt, for example, the symbol of the heart was associated with the goddess Isis, who was believed to be the protector of the dead and the goddess of love. The Egyptians also used the lotus flower as a symbol of love, purity, and rebirth.

In ancient China, the symbol of the double happiness character was often used in weddings to symbolize the union of two people in love. The character is made up of two copies of the Chinese character for happiness, which represents the happiness of the couple.

Mythological Roots

Mythology has also played a significant role in shaping the symbols of love that we use today. In Greek mythology, the god of love was Eros, who was often depicted as a young boy with wings and a bow and arrow. It was believed that anyone who was struck by one of Eros’ arrows would fall in love.

The Romans also had their own god of love, Cupid, who was often depicted as a young boy with wings and a bow and arrow. Cupid was believed to be responsible for causing people to fall in love.

In conclusion, symbols of love have been used for centuries to express feelings of affection, passion, and deep emotional connection. From ancient civilizations to mythological roots, these symbols have played a significant role in shaping our understanding of love.

Cultural Significance of Love Symbols

When it comes to love, symbols have been used across cultures and time periods to represent the emotions and feelings associated with it. These symbols have cultural significance and can be interpreted in different ways depending on the region and context. Here are some of the most popular love symbols and their cultural significance.

Eastern Interpretations

In Eastern cultures, love symbols are often associated with spirituality and the union of two souls. For example, the yin and yang symbol represents the balance of masculine and feminine energies that are necessary to create a harmonious relationship. The lotus flower is another symbol of love that represents purity, enlightenment, and the ability to rise above obstacles.

In Hindu culture, the bindi is a symbol worn by women on their forehead to signify their marital status and commitment to their partner. The red dot is believed to represent the third eye, which is associated with spiritual awakening and the ability to see beyond the physical realm.

Western Representations

In Western cultures, love symbols are often associated with romantic relationships and marriage. The heart symbol is perhaps the most popular and represents love, affection, and devotion. It is often used in wedding invitations, Valentine’s Day cards, and other romantic contexts.

Another popular love symbol in Western culture is the wedding ring, which represents the union between two people in marriage. The exchange of rings during a wedding ceremony is a symbolic gesture that signifies the couple’s commitment to each other.

In conclusion, love symbols have cultural significance and can be interpreted in different ways depending on the region and context. Whether you’re looking to express your love for a partner, family member, or friend, there are plenty of symbols to choose from that can convey your emotions and feelings in a meaningful way.

Common Love Symbols and Their Meanings

When it comes to expressing love, symbols have been used for centuries. Here are some common love symbols and their meanings:

The heart symbol is the most well-known and universal symbol of love. It represents the core of romantic love, affectionate emotion, and caring. The heart symbol can be found in jewelry, art, and literature. It is often used to represent the idea of love in general.

The rose has long been a symbol of love and romance, dating all the way back to ancient Rome. Roses have been used as symbols in art, literature, poetry, and other forms of communication. The red rose, in particular, is associated with passion and fertility. It is often given as a gift to express love and affection.

Rings have been used as love symbols for centuries. The Claddagh ring from Ireland is a popular love symbol that dates back to the 17th century. It features two hands holding a heart that bears a crown on top of it.

The two hands represent friendship, the heart represents love, and the crown represents loyalty.

Rings are often given as a symbol of commitment and love. And as a bonus, some rings include crystal and stones that are believed to have additional energetic benefits. For example, Cat’s Eye Rings are believed to play a grounding role for someone’s personal energy field.

Overall, love symbols are a beautiful way to express your feelings for someone. Whether it’s a heart-shaped pendant, a bouquet of roses, or a ring, these symbols can convey your love and affection in a meaningful way.

Nature-Inspired Symbols of Love

Love can be found in the beauty of nature. The natural world is filled with symbols of love and affection that have been used for centuries. Here are some of the most popular nature-inspired symbols of love that can be used to express your feelings to your loved ones.

Flowers are one of the most popular symbols of love. They have been used for centuries to express love and affection. Different flowers have different meanings. For example, the lotus flower symbolizes purity, enlightenment, and self-regeneration. The maple leaf, on the other hand, is a symbol of love in China and Japan. It represents the sweetness and tenderness of love.

Birds are another popular symbol of love. Doves, in particular, are often associated with love and peace. They are often used in weddings to symbolize the love between the bride and groom. Swans are also associated with love. They mate for life and are often used as a symbol of eternal love.

Water is another entity that is often used as a symbol of love. It represents the ebb and flow of emotions and the constant change that love can bring. It can be calming or turbulent, just like the ups and downs of a relationship.

In conclusion, nature-inspired symbols of love can be a beautiful way to express your feelings to your loved ones. Whether it’s through flowers, birds, or water, these symbols can help convey the depth and beauty of your love.

Mythological Love Symbols

Love has been a central theme in mythology since time immemorial, and it is no surprise that many love symbols have their roots in ancient tales. Here are some mythological love symbols that have stood the test of time.

Greek Legends

Greek mythology is full of stories of love and desire. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality, was one of the most prominent figures in Greek mythology. She was often depicted with a bow and arrow, which she used to shoot people with love and desire. Her son, Eros, also known as Cupid in Roman mythology, was the god of love and often depicted as a mischievous child with a bow and arrow.

The bow and arrow were also important symbols of love in Greek mythology. The story goes that Eros would shoot his arrows at unsuspecting mortals, causing them to fall in love with the first person they saw. The arrows were said to be made of gold and had the power to make people fall in love instantly.

Roman Tales

Roman mythology has many similarities to Greek mythology, and the gods and goddesses often have similar roles. Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, was the equivalent of Aphrodite in Greek mythology. She was often depicted with a bow and arrow, just like her Greek counterpart.

Cupid, the Roman god of love, was also similar to Eros in Greek mythology. He was often depicted as a winged child with a bow and arrow, and he would shoot people with his arrows to make them fall in love.

In conclusion, mythological love symbols have been an important part of human culture for centuries. Whether it’s the bow and arrow or the gods and goddesses of love, these symbols have stood the test of time and continue to be used to this day.

Symbols of Love in Art and Literature

Visual arts.

Art has been used to represent love and its various forms throughout history. From ancient sculptures to modern-day paintings, artists have found ways to express the emotion of love through their work. The use of symbols has been a common practice in art to convey the message of love.

One of the most popular symbols of love in art is the heart. The heart is a universal symbol of love and affection, and it has been used in art for centuries. The heart symbol is often used in paintings, sculptures, and other forms of visual art to represent love and passion.

Another popular symbol of love in art is the rose. The rose has been used as a symbol of love and romance since ancient times. It is often depicted in art as a symbol of beauty, passion, and emotion. The rose is also a popular symbol in literature, where it is often used to represent love and affection.

Poetry and Prose

Love has been a popular theme in literature since ancient times. Poets and writers have used various symbols to represent love and its different forms. One of the most popular symbols of love in literature is the heart. The heart is often used in poetry and prose to represent love and affection.

Another popular symbol of love in literature is the rose. The rose has been used in poetry and prose to represent love and beauty. It is often used as a metaphor for love, with its thorns representing the challenges and obstacles that come with love.

In addition to the heart and the rose, other symbols of love are often used in literature. These symbols include the dove, which represents peace and love, and the arrow, which represents the passion and intensity of love.

Overall, symbols of love in art and literature have been used to convey the message of love and its various forms. These symbols have become a part of our cultural heritage and continue to be used today to express the universal emotion of love.

Modern Love Symbols in Popular Culture

Media and entertainment.

Modern love symbols have become ubiquitous in popular culture, especially in media and entertainment. From movies to TV shows, love symbols are used to represent the various aspects of love. For instance, the color red is often used to symbolize love, passion, and romance. Pink is also a popular color used to symbolize love, especially in the context of young love.

Diamonds are another popular symbol of love and are often used in engagement and wedding rings. They represent the strength and durability of a relationship. The Claddagh ring, a traditional Irish ring, is also a popular love symbol. This ring features two hands holding a heart, which symbolizes love, with a crown on top, which symbolizes loyalty.

Fashion and Jewelry

Love symbols have also become a popular theme in fashion and jewelry. One of the most popular love symbols in jewelry is the heart shape. Heart-shaped jewelry, such as necklaces and bracelets, are often given as gifts to symbolize love and affection.

Tattoos are also a popular way to express love and often feature love symbols such as hearts, roses, and the Claddagh symbol. Many people also choose to get tattoos of their partner’s name or initials to symbolize their love and commitment.

In conclusion, modern love symbols have become an important part of popular culture, especially in media and entertainment and fashion and jewelry. Whether it’s a gift, a tattoo, or a piece of jewelry, love symbols are a great way to express your love and affection for someone special.

Symbolic Gestures of Love

When it comes to expressing love, sometimes words are not enough. Symbolic gestures can help convey your feelings in a more profound and meaningful way. Here are some of the most common symbolic gestures of love:

Acts of Devotion

Acts of devotion are actions that demonstrate your commitment and dedication to your loved one. These gestures can range from small acts of kindness to grand romantic gestures. Some examples of acts of devotion include:

• Cooking a special meal for your partner
• Surprising your partner with a thoughtful gift
• Writing a love letter or poem
• Planning a surprise date
• Doing something kind for your partner without being asked

Gift-Giving Traditions

Gift-giving is another way to express love and appreciation for your partner. Different cultures have different gift-giving traditions, but the sentiment remains the same. Some common gift-giving traditions include:

• Giving flowers, particularly roses, as a symbol of love and affection
• Giving chocolates or sweets as a symbol of sweetness and joy
• Giving jewelry, such as a ring or necklace, as a symbol of everlasting love
• Giving a gift that is meaningful and personal to your relationship, such as a photo album or a scrapbook

Remember, the most important thing about symbolic gestures is that they come from the heart. It’s not about the size or cost of the gesture, but rather the thought and effort put into it. So, whether it’s a small act of kindness or a grand romantic gesture, make sure it comes from a place of love, joy, peace, and compassion.

Spiritual and Religious Love Symbols

Love has been a central theme in many spiritual and religious beliefs throughout history. Here are some of the most common spiritual and religious symbols of love.

Eastern Beliefs

In Eastern beliefs, love is often associated with the lotus flower. The lotus flower is a symbol of purity, enlightenment, and spiritual awakening. In Hinduism, the lotus flower is associated with the goddess Padme, who represents love, compassion, and purity. Buddhists believe that the lotus flower represents the journey of the soul from darkness to light, and that it symbolizes the awakening of the spirit.

Another symbol of love in Eastern beliefs is the infinity symbol. The infinity symbol represents the infinite nature of love and the eternal bond between two people. It is often used in wedding ceremonies to symbolize the eternal love between the bride and groom.

Western Faiths

In Western faiths, love is often associated with doves. Doves are a symbol of peace, love, and purity. In Christianity, the dove is associated with the Holy Spirit and represents the love of God. In Judaism, the dove is a symbol of peace and love, and is often used in wedding ceremonies to symbolize the love between the bride and groom.

Another symbol of love in Western faiths is the eternity symbol. The eternity symbol represents the eternal nature of love and the unbreakable bond between two people. It is often used in wedding rings to symbolize the eternal love between the couple.

In conclusion, spiritual and religious symbols of love have been used throughout history to represent the eternal bond between two people. Whether it’s the lotus flower in Eastern beliefs or the dove in Western faiths, these symbols serve as a reminder of the power of love and the importance of cherishing the people we hold dear.

Colors and Love Symbolism

When it comes to expressing love, colors play a significant role in symbolizing different emotions. Here are some of the most popular colors that represent love and their associated meanings.

Red: The Color of Passion

Red is the color of love, passion, and desire. It is the most popular representation of love that is of the romantic and passionate type. This is because red is the color of blood, which symbolizes excitement, passion, and sexuality. Red roses are the most popular flowers given on Valentine’s Day, which is a day dedicated to celebrating love.

White and Pink: Purity and Sweetness

White and pink are the colors of purity, innocence, and sweetness. White represents purity and is often associated with weddings and new beginnings. Pink, on the other hand, represents sweetness, tenderness, and love. It is often used to represent the softer side of love, such as the love between a mother and child.

In conclusion, colors play an essential role in love symbolism. Each color represents different emotions associated with love, such as passion, purity, innocence, and sweetness. Whether you are expressing your love through flowers, gifts, or other means, understanding the symbolism of colors can help you convey your emotions more effectively.

Love Symbols in Personal Expressions

When it comes to expressing love, there are many symbols that can be used to convey the sentiment. From body art to home decor, love symbols can be incorporated into personal expressions in a variety of ways. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Tattoos are a popular way to express love, and there are many love symbols that can be used in tattoo designs. One popular choice is the love knot, which is a symbol of eternal love and commitment. The love knot is often depicted as a Celtic knot, which is a design that has no beginning or end, symbolizing the timeless nature of love.

Another popular love symbol for tattoos is the heart, which is perhaps the most well-known symbol of love. Hearts can be simple or elaborate, and can be incorporated into a wide range of designs.

Love symbols can also be used in home decor to create a warm and inviting atmosphere. One popular choice is the shell, which is a symbol of love and fertility. Shells can be used in a variety of ways, from decorative accents to functional items like soap dishes or candle holders.

Another popular love symbol for home decor is the harp, which is a symbol of love and music. Harps can be incorporated into a variety of decor styles, from traditional to modern.

If you’re looking for a unique and personalized way to express your love, consider giving a gift that incorporates a love symbol. Some popular choices include jewelry featuring love symbols like hearts or the infinity symbol, or home decor items like a cat statue, which is a symbol of love and good luck.

Overall, there are many ways to incorporate love symbols into personal expressions, whether through body art, home decor, or gifts. Choose the symbols that resonate with you and your loved ones, and use them to create a warm and inviting atmosphere that celebrates the power of love.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most powerful symbol that represents true love.

The most powerful symbol that represents true love is the heart. It is widely recognized as the universal symbol of love and has been used to express love and affection for centuries. The heart symbolizes the core of romantic love, affectionate emotion, and caring.

Which ancient symbols are commonly associated with love?

There are several ancient symbols that are commonly associated with love. The rose, for example, has long been a symbol of love and romance, dating all the way back to ancient Rome. The apple is another symbol that reflects abundance and a long-lasting romantic relationship. Throwing an apple was an expression of love and adoration in ancient Greece.

Can you identify a spiritual symbol that signifies love?

Yes, the lotus flower is a spiritual symbol that signifies love. It is a symbol of purity, enlightenment, and spiritual awakening. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the lotus flower is often associated with love, compassion, and devotion.

What number is often seen as a symbol of love?

The number 2 is often seen as a symbol of love. It represents the bond between two people and the idea of partnership and unity. In many cultures, the number 2 is associated with love and marriage.

What symbols of love are frequently mentioned in the Bible?

The Bible mentions several symbols of love, including the heart, the rose, and the dove. The heart is often used to represent the love of God for humanity, while the rose is a symbol of the love that Christ has for his followers. The dove is a symbol of peace, purity, and love, and is often associated with the Holy Spirit.

Which Greek symbol is most often related to love?

The Greek symbol that is most often related to love is the heart. The ancient Greeks believed that the heart was the source of all emotions, including love. They also associated the heart with the goddess Aphrodite, who was the goddess of love and beauty.

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Art History 101: Love and Lust Throughout Art History

Will you be our Valentine? We’re looking at the artistic practice of lust and love in a special Valentine’s edition of .ART History 101

Featured image: François Boucher, La Naissance de Vénus , 1754, oil on canvas. The Wallace Collection

Love tokens and erotica have a long and diverse history in art history. From antiquity to the present day, artists have used their skills to depict the beauty, passion, and sensuality of love. The earliest examples of love tokens and erotica in art can be found in the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and Sumeria. These cultures produced a variety of art forms that depicted love and desire, including intricate carvings and engraved metal objects. In Mesopotamia, sculptures of couples embracing were common, and some of these works of art were even used as tokens of love and devotion.

The votive Vase of Warka, from Warka (ancient Uruk), Iraq. Jemdet Nasr period, 3000-2900 BCE. The Iraq Museum, Baghdad. The vase was discovered in 1934 in the temple of Inanna, the goddess of love, fertility, and war and the main patron of the city of Uruk.

The ancient Greeks were one of the first cultures to depict love and sex in their art. They depicted love as a central theme in their poetry, plays, and visual arts. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was depicted as a symbol of sexuality, sensuality, and fertility. The Greeks were also famous for their erotic vase paintings, which depicted scenes of lovemaking, orgies, and sexual encounters between gods and mortals. These vases were popular both as household objects and as grave goods, and were made in a variety of styles and designs.

In ancient Rome, artworks imbued with themes of love of lust were very popular. Roman wall paintings, sculptures, and other works of art provided a window into the ancient Roman world and its attitudes towards sex, love, and relationships. During this period, love tokens such as rings and coins were commonly used as symbols of love and devotion. Intaglio rings and jewelry items made from delicately carved precious and semi-precious stones were tokens of wealthy members of society to express their emotions

Ancient Roman intaglio depicting a male and female bust separated by a palm leaf; possibly a marriage intaglio

The Middle Ages saw a decline in the depiction of love and sex in art, as the Church and other religious institutions, such as the rise of Islam in 700 CE, exerted a strong influence over the arts. Morality, devotion to God, and a chaste modest life became the keystones of society, However, there were still some artists who created works of erotica, although these were often hidden from public view. For example, the poem “The Song of Songs” in the Old Testament was interpreted as an allegory for the love between God and his people, but it was also interpreted as an allegory for sexual love. This interpretation gave rise to a tradition of illustrated manuscripts depicting sexual encounters between the bride and groom.

During the Renaissance, love tokens and erotica once again became a popular subject in art. The Renaissance saw a revival of classical themes and motifs, including the depiction of love and sex. Coming out of a period of war, Plague, and religious upheaval, Europe sought to explore the limits of art, luxury, lust and decadent love. The works of artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Botticelli depicted the human form in all its beauty, with an emphasis on the sensuality and sexuality of the human body. These works were often inspired by classical myths and legends, and were often depicted in a highly stylized and idealized manner.

Sandro Botticelli, “The Birth of Venus”, c. 1484–1486, tempera on canvas. Uffizi Gallery, Florence

The Baroque period was another time of great artistic expression and creativity, and love tokens and erotica once again became popular subjects in art. During this period, artists like Caravaggio and Rubens created works that depicted the human form in a sensual and sexually charged manner. These works were often inspired by classical myths and legends, and depicted the human form in a highly stylized and idealized manner. The influence of royal court life which included open promiscuity and lovers heavily influenced artistic practices. Under the guise of mythological tales and flirtatious innuendos, artists were able to express emotions of lust and love within their works.

On the heels of the Baroque period of the 17th century, the tradition of 18th-century lovers’ eye jewelry became fashionable among the aristocrats and wealthy classes to express private affections more publically. Lovers’ eye jewelry was usually commissioned by one partner and given to the other as a token of love and devotion. The miniature portrait was usually painted by a skilled miniaturist and would often be made to look like a realistic representation of the person’s eye, hence the name “lovers’ eye.”

Lovers’ eye jewelry was especially popular among the members of the court of King George III, and was often given as a secret token of love between two people who could not be together publicly. The jewelry was also popular among travelers, who would take a miniature portrait of their loved one with them on their travels as a way of staying connected.

A “lover’s eye” on a brooch surrounded by split pearls, from about 1790, to be shown at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

In the 19th century, love tokens and erotica were once again popular in art, as artists continued to explore the beauty and sensuality of the human form. The Pre-Raphaelite movement, for example, was inspired by classical myths and legends, and depicted the human form in a highly stylized and idealized manner. Many of the works of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, depicted the female form in a sexually charged manner, and were seen as a challenge to the prevailing attitudes towards women and sexuality.

Also, during this period, the macabre and spiritualism wove together with romanticism in the Victorian era. Hair jewelry, a type of sentimental jewelry that is made from human hair, was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, when people would often make sentimental jewelry from the hair of their loved ones as a way of keeping their memory close. Additionally, these tokens were ways of expressing love and affection between partners. Some pieces of hair jewelry were also used to commemorate special occasions, such as weddings and births, and were often passed down from generation to generation as family heirlooms. Hair jewelry was typically made in the form of brooches, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings, and was often decorated with intricate gold or silver work.

Looking at contemporary art, themes of love and eroticism are still found in many artists’ works.   Kara Walker, for example, uses these themes to critically examine the complexities and contradictions of love, race, and gender. One of her most well-known pieces, A Subtlety or The Marvelous Sugar Baby , (2014) is a monumental sculpture of a sphinx-like figure made out of sugar that serves as a commentary on the ways in which black women have been objectified and fetishized throughout history. Through her art, Walker challenges viewers to consider the ways in which love and desire can be intertwined with power and oppression.

Kara Walker, “A Subtlety” (2014).

At the crux of this exploration into love and lust in art history is the shared human experience of these emotions. The sometimes overwhelming feelings of passion have been captured visually throughout history as a means to express these complex narratives. These powerful symbols of love and devotion have also provided a window into the cultural, social, and historical context of the people who created and used them. Love tokens are a testament to the enduring power of love as a source of inspiration and motivation in the arts and are a constant reminder of a shared human experience among us all.

Katlin Rogers

Visual expressions of the language of love

written by art historian & curator

Mihaela Manolache

Art has long been a medium through which love is visually expressed. Across centuries and cultures, artists have used painting, sculpture, and other mediums to capture the essence of love .  Gustav Klimt’s ”The Kiss” is an iconic masterpiece that radiates passion and intimacy. The use of gold leaf in the artwork adds an ethereal quality, highlighting the preciousness of love. Similarly, Sandro Botticelli’s ”The Birth of Venus” portrays the birth of the goddess of love from the sea, a symbol of love’s timeless and transcendent nature. In literature, authors have skilfully employed visual imagery to convey love. The works of William Shakespeare, for instance, are replete with vivid descriptions of love.

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In the contemporary world, there are movies, symbols, and even digital expressions that visually represent love in many forms and invite us to see it, feel it, and appreciate its beauty in all its forms.

These artworks are not mere depictions of love; they are vehicles for conveying the intensity, vulnerability, and beauty of human connection . 

Timeless Expressions of Love

Throughout history, painting and sculpture have been the main mediums through which humanity has sought to visually represent the intricate and profound emotion of love. These forms of visual art have offered artists a canvas through which they can explore the diverse facets of love, from passionate romance to familial bond and symbolism, making it a timeless and universal subject of artistic expression. 

One of the most captivating aspects of love in the world of painting is its portrayal of passionate romance. The work of Gustav Klimt, particularly his masterpiece ” The Kiss ”, is a testament to visual art’s power in capturing the intensity of romantic love. Painted during the early 20th century in Vienna, ”The Kiss” exudes sensuality, intimacy, and opulence. At the center of the painting, a couple locked in a passionate kiss is enveloped in a shimmering golden robe of patterns and swirls. The use of gold leaf adds a luxurious and otherworldly quality to the scene, emphasizing the precious nature of love. Klimt’s work not only encapsulates the physicality of love but also hints at its spiritual and emotional dimensions. The ornate, intricate patterns that adorn the couple’s bodies convey a sense of unity and interconnectedness, highlighting the profound bond shared between lovers. Gustav Klimt’s painting “The Kiss” remains highly relevant today as a powerful and evocative language of love. Despite being created in the early 20th century, its enduring appeal and ability to convey the essence of love continue to captivate audiences around the world.

In sculpture, Auguste Rodin’s ”The Kiss” also explores the theme of passionate love. Created in the late 19th century, this sculpture depicts a passionate and intimate embrace between a man and a woman. The lovers’ bodies are intertwined in a sensual and harmonious union, their lips meeting in a tender kiss. What makes ”The Kiss” exceptional is its ability to convey the intensity of human emotion through the medium of sculpture. The tactile quality of the work allows viewers to appreciate the three-dimensional form of the lovers, making their love palpable and tangible. Rodin’s attention to detail, particularly in the rendering of their bodies and the expressions on their faces, imbues the sculpture with a sense of vulnerability, tenderness, and profound connection.

Leonardo da Vinci ‘s ”The Virgin and Child with St. Anne” is a masterpiece that beautifully captures the essence of love as a familial bond. Created during the Italian Renaissance, this painting portrays the Virgin Mary, her mother St. Anne, and the infant Jesus. At its core, the artwork celebrates the loving and nurturing relationship between a mother and her child. The Virgin Mary gazes lovingly at her infant son, her expression radiating warmth and tenderness. St. Anne, positioned beside them, reflects wisdom and support. The depiction of the infant Jesus playfully interacting with a lamb adds an element of innocence and purity, emphasizing the unconditional love and protection found within families.

Leonardo’s meticulous attention to detail and his mastery of chiaroscuro, the use of light and shadow, bring depth and emotion to the painting. This technique allows viewers to feel the intimate connection between the figures, reinforcing the idea that familial love is profound, enduring, and timeless. ”The Virgin and Child with St. Anne” remains a poignant representation of the love between generations, symbolizing the nurturing and protective bond that exists within families. It reminds us that, amidst the complexities of life, the love shared among family members remains a source of strength, support, and enduring affection. Leonardo’s masterpiece continues to resonate today as a timeless celebration of the love that binds families together.

Botticelli’s ”The Birth of Venus” is a masterful depiction of love through symbolism, offering a profound exploration of both the physical and spiritual aspects of this powerful emotion. Painted during the Italian Renaissance, this iconic work portrays the birth of the goddess of love and beauty, Venus, from the sea foam. The symbolism in this artwork conveys the eternal and transformative nature of love. Venus, emerging from the foaming waves on a scallop shell, embodies beauty, desire, and the essence of love itself. Her posture and graceful form reflect her divine nature and enchanting allure, making her the embodiment of love’s physical attraction. The winds, personified by the figures of Zephyr and Chloris, gently guide her to shore, highlighting the idea that love is a force that influences and guides us.

The sea, with its vastness and depth, symbolizes the boundless nature of love, which, like the sea, knows no limits. The abundance of flowers, particularly the roses, around Venus, suggests the association of love with nature’s beauty and fertility. Overall, ”The Birth of Venus” is a visual representation of the enduring and transformative qualities of love. Its symbolism invites viewers to contemplate love as both a powerful force of attraction and a timeless and transcendent aspect of the human experience. Botticelli’s work continues to inspire and resonate today, reminding us of love’s enduring significance in our lives.

Contemporary Facets of Love

Contemporary art has evolved to reflect the dynamic facets of love in the modern world. Artists today explore love’s complexities, the impact of technology on relationships, and the fluidity of gender and identity through performative and installation art. These innovative expressions challenge traditional notions of love and invite viewers to engage with love in new and thought-provoking ways.

Marina Abramović, a renowned performance artist, has made a significant contribution to the contemporary exploration of love through her powerful piece titled ” The Lovers ”. In this performance, Abramović and her former partner, Ulay, embarked on a profound journey of love and separation. ”The Lovers” involved the two artists walking towards each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China. They met in the middle, shared a passionate embrace, and then continued walking until they parted ways forever. This performative act beautifully encapsulated the complexities of love, distance, and human connection. From a contemporary perspective, ”The Lovers” speaks to the challenges of modern relationships, particularly in an era where physical and emotional distances are often bridged through technology. Abramović’s work reminds us of the power and vulnerability of love, emphasizing that love’s journey is often as significant as its destination. In the context of contemporary love, “The Lovers” invites reflection on the endurance and transience of human connections in an ever-changing world.

In the digital age, technology has reshaped the way we experience and express love, and contemporary artists have responded by exploring this intersection. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s installation artwork, ”33 Questions per Minute”, offers a thought-provoking exploration of love from a contemporary perspective, delving into the intersection of technology and human emotion. In this installation, two computer terminals engage in a continuous exchange of questions and answers about love and relationships, generating an impressive 33 questions per minute.

This installation highlights the role of technology in shaping contemporary love and communication. In an era of online dating, social media, and virtual connections, the artwork raises important questions about the authenticity of digital relationships. It challenges viewers to consider how technology has influenced the ways we express and understand love in the modern world. ” 33 Questions per Minute ” serves as a commentary on the rapid pace of modern life and the constant bombardment of information and stimuli. From a contemporary perspective, the installation prompts us to reflect on the nature of our connections, the depth of our conversations, and the impact of technology on our experiences of love and intimacy. It encourages viewers to question the quality and authenticity of their digital interactions and the role of technology in shaping contemporary expressions of love.

Contemporary art continues to push the boundaries of how we perceive and experience love. Performative and installation art offer immersive and thought-provoking experiences that challenge traditional notions of love, explore the impact of technology on relationships and reflect the fluidity of love in the modern world. These innovative expressions of love invite us to engage with the complexities and diversity of love in today’s society, fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of this universal and ever-evolving emotion.

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14 Ancient Symbols of Love and What They Stand For

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Claddagh symbol, clasped hands, celtic love knot.

Love is as difficult to describe as it is easy to recognize. When you know, you know, as an old adage would say. Almost every person who has walked the earth has tried to define love through prose and action, but there has never been a universal definition. It’s because love is never the same for two different people.

Now, when people can’t explain something with words, they turn to symbolism. As a result, love has become one of the most symbolized concepts in history. Here’s how the earliest romantics communicated the intricacies of love using symbols:

The lovelorn have always appealed to Cupid , a winged child carrying a bow and a bag of arrows. According to mythology, the boy would strike his arrows and pierce the hearts of two people, causing them to instantly fall in love.

He is mischievous though, and would constantly match gods with mortals, or two mortals who are nothing alike. The image of a winged infant with his arrows has since become the most recognizable Valentine symbols .

In art, Cupid is often depicted with a blindfold, to signify that love has nothing to do with what the eyes can see.

People often mistake the Ankh as a Christian symbol because it bears an uncanny resemblance to Christ’s cross, only with a circle on top.

Originally from ancient Egypt, the ankh has taken on various names as it adapted by other cultures. It is called the cross of life, the key to life, or even the ‘cross with a handle’.

Egyptian art depicts gods holding up the Ankh to the nose of the Pharaoh, giving him eternal life. However, the symbol is also used to symbolize fertility and the union between man and woman. The Ankh speaks to a lot of cultures because it also represents love, the key to life.

This ancient symbol of love derives its history from a hauntingly beautiful Irish legend of a fisherman who was separated from the love of his life after falling captive to pirates who traded him as a slave. 

Each day, while tending fires at his masters’ goldsmith shop, the fisherman would steal flecks of gold. Years passed, and he was finally able to forge a ring to present to his love if he ever got to return home. 

From the flecks of gold he carefully stowed away for years, the fisherman made a ring showing a heart wearing a crown while being held by two hands. The symbol was then immortalized and nicknamed ‘ Claddagh ,’ after the fishing village where the devoted paramour first lived.

To this day, the symbol is used to represent undying love and unfaltering loyalty. Claddagh rings remain one of the most symbolic types of engagement or wedding rings.

While holding someone’s hand is a universal love language, the symbolism of clasped hands is associated with a very different kind of love.

In old Victorian tombstones, it is common to see clasped hands engraved, sculpted, or drawn in tombstones. The symbol portrayed eternal love, which transcends even death. 

Clasped hands portrayed the unsevered connection between the living and the dead, so long as they were once bound with love. For married couples, it is almost a promise that although one of them had already gone ahead, they would surely meet again someday.

Open fire is a widely recognized symbol for love – the passionate, fiery kind. It is a testament to how fickle desire can be since flame can be extinguished almost as quickly as it starts. As they say, the hottest love has the coldest end.

Back in the day, when you referred to someone as an ‘old flame’ of yours, you weren’t just referring to a former boyfriend or girlfriend. An old flame was someone who you loved fiercely, almost destructively, only to lose them in the end as the flame turns into embers. In modern-day parlance, an old flame is similar to the concept of the one that got away.

The forbidden fruit is used to symbolize the physical, carnal, and slightly dangerous aspects of love. This is why the Roman goddess of desire and love, Venus, is usually drawn holding an apple. Biblically, the apple is said to symbolize temptation and forbidden desires of the heart and the flesh.

In Chinese culture, giving someone an apple is akin to giving them red roses in adoration, while in the seventh century, it was common to see newlyweds share an apple on their wedding day to symbolize eternal love and a lasting union. 

You may know doves are the universal symbol for peace . But these white-feathered birds also represent love. This association dates back to the Middle Ages when people thought that dove birds pick their mates on the exact date of Valentine’s Day. 

Doves also represent romance for the Ancient Greeks because Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, is often depicted with doves flying around or resting on her hands. Plus, these birds are also believed to be monogamous, which is  why they are also usually a part of wedding day celebrations, when the couple release doves into the air. 

Aside from doves, swans are also commonly connected to love because of their loyalty to their mate. It is believed that a union between swans lasts forever. That’s why they say that when a swan appears before you, it’s a sign of love that you must not ignore.

On top of it all, swans are also known to represent motherly love because they are known to be fiercely protective of their young. 

The love knot or the lover’s knot is more than just a symbol of love. It represents the unbreakable bond and connection between a couple. A love knot is also a common symbol for the unity between partners. In fact, it was so famous that it has become part of several literary pieces all over the world including a short story in India, part of the prologue of the Canterbury Tales, and was also referenced in a poem written by Alfred Noyes.

There are many variations of the love knot. But it is usually given by young lovers to their partners to test their relationship. If the love knot does not break after a year of wearing, it means that their love would stand the test of time.

A variation of the love knot, the Celtic Love knot deserves its own spot on this list because it looks beautiful and it also has different meanings depending on its designs.

• Celtic Oval Love Knot (aka spiral love knot) – This is one of the simplest and earliest Celtic love knots that can be traced as far back as 2500 BC. It represents endless love and eternal life.
• Celtic Motherhood Knot (aka icovellavna ) – This represents the enduring and undying love between a mother and her child. 
• Celtic Square Love Knot – This love knot is made out of a single line that runs through all four sides of a square that is commonly used in wedding rings. It symbolizes unity and loyalty between couples that are about to tie the knot.
• Serch Bythol – This is a symbol made up of two Celtic knots placed side by side to represent the everlasting love between partners. 

The belief that harps represent love can be traced to Europeans, specifically to the Ancient Celts and people from Norway and Iceland. For the Celts, harps serve as a bridge of love that connects heaven and earth. In Norway and Iceland, residents believe that harp strings form a ladder that leads to higher states of love. 

Roses are one of the most common symbols of love. The tradition of using roses to symbolize a person’s love mainly comes from literature, with Shakespeare making an allusion to roses in his famous work, Romeo and Juliet.  But did you know that the flowers themselves were simply transported from China to Europe in the 1800s? 

However, roses symbolize different kinds of love depending on the colors of the flowers themselves. These include the following:

• Red – deep affection to a romantic partner
• Pink – token of admiration, gentle love
• White – sign of remembrance and respect
• Purple – adoration, fascination
• Lavender – love at first sight
• Yellow – friendship, care
• Orange – passion, enthusiasm, romance

Maple leaves also symbolized love for Ancient Chinese and Japanese people. Specifically, the red maple leaf is used to represent the sweetness of love in everyday life because of the association of its leaves to the sweet maple syrup. That’s why a maple leaf usually serves as a reminder of the beauty of love to couples both young and old.

Shells are one of the most ancient symbols of love. One reason behind this is the fact that there are stories from Greek Mythology stating that Aphrodite was born out of a great big shell. 

But shells are popular symbols of love not just for Europeans but also for Native Americans because of their protective nature, since they contain precious pearls. Hindus, meanwhile, believe that the conch shell is used to call love.

Wrapping Up

The above symbols of love are among the most famous love symbols there are. Although ancient, they still remain at the forefront of romance, with couples gifting each other these symbols as a representation of their desire and love for each other.

Dani Rhys has worked as a writer and editor for over 15 years. She holds a Masters degree in Linguistics and Education, and has also studied Political Science, Ancient History and Literature. She has a wide range of interests ranging from ancient cultures and mythology to Harry Potter and gardening. She works as the chief editor of Symbol Sage but also takes the time to write on topics that interest her.

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Symbols of Love: Exploring Meanings & Diversity

Did you know that various symbols , such as clasped hands and goddesses, have been used for years to express love and affection? T he se powerful emblems, such as various symbols, carry deep meanings that transcend words. Understanding these symbols not only enriches our perception of romance but also unveils diverse cultural traditions surrounding love and people. In this post, we’ll delve into the idea of love symbols and how they signify the beginning and eternity of love across different cultures. Let’s explore how these timeless symbols speak volumes about human emotions and connections between people.

Table of Contents

Exploring the Diversity of Love Symbols Worldwide

Varied meanings.

Love symbols are not universal; they differ across many cultures, regions, and people. Each culture has its own unique love symbols that hold distinct meanings . For instance, in China and Japan, various symbols represent love and affection.

Exploring these diverse love symbols can offer a broader perspective on relationships and emotions. In India, the lotus flower is often associated with eternal devotion in relationships, symbolizing love, purity, and divine beauty. Similarly, Celtic knots from Ireland symbolize an unbreakable bond of love between two individuals.

Understanding these varied symbols helps us appreciate the depth and complexity of love across different parts of the world.

Cultural Significance

The significance of different cultures ‘ love symbols reflects their unique values and traditions. For instance, in South Korea, couples celebrate Pepero Day by exchanging chocolate sticks on November 11th because the date (11/11) resembles four slender sticks side by side—symbolizing love and togetherness.

Nature’s Emblems of Affection

Flowers and animals.

Nature offers a plethora of symbols of love , including flowers and animals. For instance, roses and lilies are widely recognized as symbols of love and romance. Roses, a symbol of love, come in various colors, each carrying its own significance. Red symbolizes deep love, while pink represents admiration and gratitude. Lilies, on the other hand, signify purity and devotion.

In addition to flowers, certain animals also serve as emblems of love, symbolizing affection. Swans are often associated with love and fidelity due to their lifelong partnerships; they glide gracefully across water bodies side by side with their partners, symbolizing their commitment. Similarly, doves have been revered for centuries as symbols of peace, love, and monogamy in numerous cultures worldwide.

These natural symbols hold significant cultural importance globally. In Greek mythology, the goddess Aphrodite is often depicted with roses adorning her head or feet – a clear symbol of love’s beauty transcending time and space. Moreover, in Chinese culture, the peony flower symbolizes prosperity alongside mutual affection and love between partners.

Flowers like roses convey various emotions based on color.

Swans are known for their lifelong partnerships.

Doves represent peace and monogamy in many cultures.

Cultural Interpretations of Love Symbols

Unique interpretations.

Love symbols are interpreted differently in various cultures . For instance, in Japan, the cherry blossom symbolizes the transient nature of life and is associated with love. In contrast, in Western cultures, the red rose symbolizes true love and passion. These diverse interpretations reflect the unique values and beliefs held by different societies symbol love.

Understanding these cultural interpretations allows us to appreciate how couples express their affection and love across the world, using symbols. It also provides insight into the deep-rooted traditions that shape our understanding of love symbols. By recognizing these variations of love, symbol, we gain a richer understanding of human emotions and connections.

Reflection of Values

Love symbols often mirror a culture’s core values and traditions. For example, in India, intricate patterns known as “mehndi” are applied to brides’ hands before weddings to symbolize joy, beauty, spiritual awakening, offering protection from evil spirits while promoting fertility, prosperity, and love within marriage. This tradition reflects India’s emphasis on family unity, love, and auspicious beginnings.

Similarly, Celtic knots symbolize eternal love due to their endless loops without a beginning or end—reflecting Celtic beliefs about interconnectedness and continuity within relationships.

Universal Icons of Love and Their Meanings

Popular symbols.

Love symbols are not only culturally significant but also universally recognized across different societies. Popular symbols such as hearts, infinity signs, wedding rings, and love hold deep meanings that transcend language barriers. For instance, the heart shape is a widely acknowledged symbol representing love and affection in various parts of the world. Its simplicity makes it easily identifiable and relatable to people from diverse backgrounds, symbolizing love.

These popular symbols serve as powerful visual representations of love, emotions, and commitments. The infinity symbol , characterized by its looped design, conveys the concept of eternal love that knows no bounds or limitations. Similarly, wedding rings are universally associated with commitment, unity, and love in marriage, symbolizing an unbreakable bond between partners.

The widespread recognition of the love symbol allows individuals to express their feelings without uttering a single word. They provide a common language for conveying emotions, love, across different cultures and languages. Whether it’s through exchanging heart-shaped gifts on Valentine’s Day or presenting wedding rings during marriage ceremonies, these universal symbols of love play a crucial role in communicating profound sentiments.

The Timeless Symbolism of Red Roses

Passionate love and desire.

Red roses have been associated with passionate love and desire for centuries, symbolizing the intense emotions. The vibrant color of the petals symbolizes intense emotions, particularly romantic feelings of love. This timeless symbolism has transcended ancient times to remain a powerful representation of love.

Throughout history, red roses have been revered as an enduring emblem of love, symbolizing deep emotional connection. From classic literature to modern pop culture, the red rose continues to be depicted as a symbol of unwavering love and desire. Whether in poetry or art, love’s significance as a symbol of romance has stood the test of time.

Gestures of Deep Affection

The gesture of giving red roses symbolizes love in various cultures around the world. It is often used to express profound affection or convey romantic interest, symbolizing love. For instance, on Valentine’s Day, red roses are exchanged between partners as an expression of passionate love and devotion.

In addition to romantic relationships, red roses also hold sentimental value when given to family members or close friends during special occasions such as anniversaries or birthdays. Their universal appeal and love makes them a cherished gift that transcends language barriers and cultural differences.

Claddagh Rings – A Gesture of Love and Loyalty

Meaningful design.

The Claddagh ring is a cherished Irish symbol that embodies love, loyalty , and friendship . Its design tells a story: the heart represents love, the hands symbolize friendship, and the crown signifies loyalty. When someone wears this ring on their right hand with the heart facing outward, it suggests that they are open to finding love. Conversely, wearing it on the left hand with the heart pointing inward indicates that one’s love is taken.

The circle of a Claddagh ring signifies eternity and endlessness in relationships and love. The clasped hands represent unity and togetherness in both platonic and romantic connections, symbolizing love. This timeless piece of jewelry serves as a constant reminder of love.

Relationship Significance

For centuries, people have worn Claddagh rings to convey their love relationship status without saying a word. Whether it’s worn as an engagement or wedding ring or simply as an expression of affection and love between friends or family members, this symbolic item holds deep meaning for those who wear it.

Wearing a Claddagh ring can be seen as making a public declaration about one’s commitment to another person—a promise sealed by its meaningful design of love. On special occasions such as anniversaries or Valentine’s Day, presenting someone with a Claddagh ring speaks volumes about love and devotion.

Cupid’s Arrow and Its Place in Love Lore

Origin of cupid.

Cupid, the mischievous Roman god of love, is often depicted with a bow and arrows. In ancient Roman mythology, he was believed to cause people to fall in love by shooting them with his magical arrows. This symbol represents the irresistible power of love, attraction, and infatuation.

Cupid’s arrow is deeply rooted in Roman mythology as a representation of love’s ability to strike unexpectedly. The idea that being struck by an arrow from Cupid causes one to fall deeply in love has been perpetuated through centuries, becoming an enduring concept associated with romance.

Symbolism Across Cultures

The concept of love, being struck by Cupid’s arrow, transcends cultures and has become synonymous with falling head over heels for someone. It embodies the universal experience of feeling captivated by another person in love.

In Norse mythology, this idea is reflected in stories about powerful gods and goddesses who were themselves affected by similar forces of love beyond their control. The parallel between these myths highlights the timeless nature of the theme—love as a force that can’t be reasoned with or resisted.

Rose Quartz – The Stone of Heartfelt Connection

Associations with love.

Rose quartz , a gentle pink crystal, is often linked to love , compassion, and emotional healing. It’s like Cupid’s arrow of love in the form of a stone. People believe that love has the power to attract and enhance loving relationships. Just as Cupid’s arrow strikes the heart, rose quartz is thought to bring love and heartfelt connections between individuals.

This beautiful crystal symbolizes deep connections, affectionate bonds, and love between people. Much like how Cupid’s arrow brings love, rose quartz is said to promote harmony and understanding within relationships. Its soft pink hue reflects tenderness and warmth, making it an ideal representation of love.

Emotional Healing

Many individuals turn to rose quartz for emotional healing during times of heartache or distress in their relationships and love. This crystal holds a special place in love lore by offering comfort and support when dealing with matters of the heart. Just as Cupid mends broken hearts with his magical touch, rose quartz is believed to soothe emotional wounds and encourage love and forgiveness.

Dove Imagery and Its Association with Love

Symbolic representation.

Doves are universally recognized as symbols of love , peace, and purity. Their gentle nature and monogamous behavior make them ideal representations of romantic love. The use of dove imagery to symbolize love and unity is deeply rooted in various cultures and traditions.

The image of doves has been associated with love for centuries, dating back to ancient Greek mythology where they were linked to the goddess of love, Aphrodite. In Christianity, doves are seen as symbols of the Holy Spirit’s presence during significant events such as baptism or confirmation.

Use in Ceremonies

In modern times, dove imagery continues to play a significant role in expressing love and commitment. It is often incorporated into weddings through various forms such as decorations, invitations, or release ceremonies /// love. The sight of doves flying together symbolizes love, harmony between partners, and the beginning of their journey together.

The representation of love extends beyond weddings; it also appears in other ceremonies celebrating enduring relationships like anniversaries or vow renewals. This symbolism creates a powerful visual connection between the love expressed by the couples involved and the enduring nature of their affection.

Conclusion on the Language of Love Symbols

Diversity of symbols.

Love symbols are not limited to a specific culture or region. Different cultures have their unique symbols that represent love and affection. For example, in Japan, the cherry blossom is a symbol of love and beauty. In India, the lotus flower holds deep significance as a symbol of purity, divine beauty, and love. These diverse symbols enrich our understanding of how love is expressed and valued across the globe.

Symbols such as flowers and jewelry serve as a universal language for expressing emotions of love. Each culture has its own set of symbols, including love, that are deeply embedded in its traditions and history. The use of these symbols transcends words and allows individuals to convey deep emotions without verbal communication, including love.

Significance in Relationships

The use of love symbols is not confined to romantic relationships. They also play a significant role in familial bonds, friendships, and love. For instance, the exchange of friendship bracelets or the gifting of a red rose to a close friend signifies love and appreciation beyond romantic connections. This demonstrates how love symbols extend beyond romantic love and encompass various forms of affection and connection.

Love symbols continue to evolve with time, adapting to modern expressions while retaining their traditional significance. The enduring presence of love in human relationships highlights its timeless relevance in expressing emotions and fostering meaningful connections.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some universal icons of love and their meanings.

Universal icons of love include the heart symbol , which represents affection and emotion; the infinity symbol, signifying eternal love; and the red rose, symbolizing passion and romance. These symbols hold deep cultural significance across various societies.

How is rose quartz associated with heartfelt connection?

Rose quartz is known as the stone of unconditional love. It promotes compassion, peace, tenderness, and healing within relationships. Its gentle energy fosters empathy and understanding between individuals, making it a powerful symbol for heartfelt connections in both romantic and platonic contexts.

Why are Claddagh rings considered a gesture of love and loyalty?

The design of Claddagh rings features hands holding a heart adorned with a crown. This symbolism represents friendship (hands), love (heart), and loyalty (crown). Traditionally exchanged as tokens of affection or worn as wedding bands in Irish culture, these rings convey enduring commitment in relationships.

What is the significance of dove imagery in association with love?

Dove imagery has long been linked to themes of peace, purity, and devotion. In many cultures worldwide, doves represent fidelity and undying affection due to their monogamous nature. As such, they have become enduring symbols for harmonious partnerships and lasting love.

How does Cupid’s arrow fit into love lore?

Cupid’s arrow originates from Roman mythology as a tool used by Cupid – the god of desire – to strike individuals’ hearts with uncontrollable affection. In contemporary contexts, it serves as an emblematic representation of falling deeply in love or being struck by romantic infatuation.

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Symbols of Love: Uncovering the Meaning and Significance

What are the symbols of love? Love is a powerful and universal emotion that has been represented and celebrated through various symbols throughout history. These symbols can hold different meanings and significance depending on cultural and personal interpretations.

From the ancient Greek symbol of a heart to the red rose commonly associated with romantic love, there are countless symbols that evoke feelings of love and affection. In this article, we will explore some of the most well-known and widely recognized symbols of love, as well as uncover some lesser-known symbols that hold special meaning within different cultures and contexts.

Table of Contents

The heart is widely recognized as a symbol of love and affection. It is often used to represent deep emotions, passion, and romantic love. The iconic heart shape, commonly depicted as an inverted triangle with rounded edges, has become synonymous with love and is found in various forms of artwork, jewelry, and decorations.

The origin of the heart as a symbol of love and affection can be traced back to ancient cultures. Some believe that the heart symbol originated from the ancient Greeks, who associated the heart with the seat of emotions and desires. Others attribute its origins to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the heart was the source of wisdom, morality, and intellect.

In modern times, the heart symbol has become an iconic representation of love and romance. It is commonly used in Valentine’s Day cards, wedding decorations, and engagement rings. The heart symbolizes the deep emotional connection between two individuals and serves as a reminder of the love they share.

While the heart symbolizes romantic love, it can also represent love in a broader sense. It can symbolize love for family, friends, or even for humanity as a whole. The heart symbol transcends boundaries and cultures, serving as a universal symbol of love and compassion.

Overall, the heart symbol holds significant meaning and is a powerful representation of love and affection. It serves as a reminder of the strong emotional bonds we share with others and the importance of love in our lives.

The rose is a symbol of love and romance that has been used for centuries to convey deep emotions. It represents beauty, passion, and devotion, making it a popular choice for expressing love to someone special. The different colors of roses can also carry different meanings, adding further depth to this symbolic flower.

The red rose is the most commonly associated with love and romance. It is often given as a gift on special occasions, such as Valentine’s Day, to express deep love and affection. The red rose represents passionate love and is a classic symbol of romance and desire.

White roses, on the other hand, symbolize purity and innocence . They are often used in weddings to represent the pure love shared between the bride and groom. White roses can also convey reverence and respect, making them a popular choice for honoring loved ones who have passed away.

Pink roses are associated with gentleness, grace, and admiration. They can be given as a token of appreciation or to express admiration and gratitude towards someone. Pink roses also symbolize sweetness and are often associated with nurturing and caring love.

Yellow roses have traditionally been a symbol of friendship and joy. They can be given to a friend to express appreciation and to brighten their day. Yellow roses can also represent new beginnings and can be used to celebrate milestones or to offer support and encouragement.

The symbolism of the rose extends beyond just its color. The number of roses can also carry meaning. A single rose can represent love at first sight or a simple but profound love. A dozen roses often signify a declaration of love and are a timeless gesture of romance. Other numbers of roses can convey different messages, such as two roses representing a deep bond and six roses symbolizing a desire to be cherished.

In addition to its symbolic meaning, roses are known for their beauty and fragrance. They are often used in bouquets, arrangements, and as decorative elements in weddings and special events. The beauty of the rose can evoke feelings of joy, admiration, and awe, making it a powerful symbol of love and affection.

The dove is a symbol that is often associated with love, peace, and purity. In many cultures, doves are seen as gentle and loyal creatures, making them a fitting symbol for love and devotion. The dove’s association with love can be traced back to ancient Greek and Roman mythology, where the dove was associated with the goddess of love, Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology). According to legend, doves were believed to be the sacred animals of Aphrodite, symbolizing love and commitment.

In Christianity, the dove holds significant symbolism as well. It is often associated with the Holy Spirit and is seen as a representation of God’s love and blessing. This association stems from the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, where a dove returns to Noah’s ship carrying an olive branch, signaling the end of the flood and the beginning of a new era of peace and love.

The white dove, in particular, is commonly associated with weddings and is often used in wedding ceremonies as a symbol of love, fidelity, and the beginning of a new chapter in a couple’s life together. Releasing doves during a wedding ceremony is a symbol of the couple’s commitment and their hope for a peaceful and harmonious future together.

Overall, the dove is a powerful symbol of love and peace that transcends cultures and religions. Its gentle nature and loyalty make it a perfect representation of the love and devotion we strive for in our relationships.

Cupid, the Roman god of love and desire, is often depicted as a mischievous child armed with a bow and arrow. He is responsible for shooting his arrows into the hearts of mortals, causing them to fall in love. Cupid’s symbol has become synonymous with love and romance, representing the power and influence of passion.

In mythology, Cupid is the son of Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war. He is often portrayed as a winged cherub or a young boy with a quiver of arrows. Legend has it that when Cupid strikes someone with his arrow, they immediately fall in love with the next person they see.

The symbol of Cupid has been widely used in art, literature, and popular culture to represent love and the pursuit of romantic relationships. It is often associated with Valentine’s Day, a holiday dedicated to expressing love and affection. The image of Cupid has also been depicted in various forms, such as figurines, paintings, and sculptures, as a symbol of love and desire.

In addition to his arrows, Cupid is also often depicted with other symbols of love, such as hearts, roses, and doves. These symbols further reinforce the association between Cupid and love, creating a powerful and recognizable image of romance.

Diamonds are one of the most coveted gemstones and are often associated with love and commitment. They have long been a symbol of everlasting love and are a popular choice for engagement rings and wedding bands. The diamond’s inherent strength and durability make it a fitting representation of a lasting and unbreakable bond.

Beyond their physical qualities, diamonds also hold symbolic meaning. They are believed to amplify the feelings of love and commitment between partners. Diamonds are said to bring clarity and purity to a relationship, symbolizing the importance of transparency and honesty. They are often seen as a reflection of the eternal nature of love, just like the unending facets of a diamond.

In addition to their significance in romantic relationships, diamonds also hold broader symbolic meanings. They are associated with strength, resilience, and the ability to withstand pressure. Diamonds are often seen as a representation of inner beauty and the power of transformation. They remind us that even under immense pressure, something beautiful and valuable can emerge.

It’s important to note that the symbolism behind diamonds is deeply ingrained in culture and personal beliefs. While they are often associated with romantic love, their meaning can vary depending on individual perspectives. Ultimately, the symbolism of a diamond lies in the significance and sentiment attached to it by the person giving or receiving it.

References: – https://www.gia.edu/diamond-history-lore

Infinity Symbol

The infinity symbol (∞) is a well-known symbol representing everlasting love and infinite connection. It has become a popular symbol of love and devotion, often used in jewelry, tattoos, and other forms of expression.

The symbol itself resembles a sideways figure eight, with no beginning or end, symbolizing the concept of eternal love and never-ending commitment. It represents a love that knows no boundaries, transcending time and space.

The infinity symbol’s meaning and significance may differ depending on the context in which it is used. In the realm of love and relationships, it is often associated with the idea of soulmates and a love that is meant to last forever.

For some, the infinity symbol may represent the idea of endless possibilities and an optimistic outlook on life and love. It can serve as a reminder to cherish and nurture the love in one’s life, with the belief that love has the power to endure and overcome any challenge.

In addition to representing romantic love, the infinity symbol can also symbolize the everlasting bond between family members or close friends. It can serve as a reminder of the unbreakable connection and love shared among loved ones, no matter the circumstances.

Overall, the infinity symbol is a powerful and meaningful symbol of love, unity, and eternal connection. Whether worn as a piece of jewelry or used as a visual representation, it serves as a reminder to embrace and celebrate the infinite power of love in all aspects of life.

Wedding rings

Wedding rings are a symbol of love, commitment, and unity. They are typically exchanged between partners during a wedding ceremony and are worn as a constant reminder of the vows and promises made on that special day. The circular shape of a wedding ring symbolizes eternity and the everlasting nature of love.

Traditionally, wedding rings are made of precious metals such as gold, silver, or platinum. These metals are chosen for their durability and beauty, as they are meant to withstand the test of time. Some couples also opt for rings with gemstones, such as diamonds or other precious stones, to add a touch of sparkle and personalization to their rings.

The tradition of exchanging wedding rings dates back centuries and has been practiced in various cultures around the world. It is a symbolic gesture that represents the sacred bond between two individuals and their commitment to a lifelong partnership. Wedding rings are often worn on the fourth finger of the left hand, known as the “ring finger,” as it was believed to have a direct connection to the heart.

In addition to symbolizing love and commitment, wedding rings also serve as a visual declaration of a person’s marital status. The act of wearing a wedding ring can signify to others that an individual is happily married and dedicated to their spouse. It can also serve as a reminder of the love and support that exists within a marriage, even during challenging times.

While the tradition of exchanging and wearing wedding rings remains strong, the design and style of rings have evolved over time. Many couples now choose to personalize their rings by engraving meaningful messages or symbols on the inside or outside of the band. This adds a sentimental touch and further enhances the significance of the ring as a symbol of their unique love story.

Overall, wedding rings hold deep meaning and sentimental value for couples entering into a marriage. They serve as a constant reminder of the love, commitment, and promises shared between partners and the lifelong journey they embark upon together.

Lovebirds are a well-known symbol of love and affection. These small, colorful birds are often regarded as a representation of romance, devotion, and companionship. Their name itself suggests the strong bond and affection shared between them, making them a popular choice for pet bird enthusiasts and as symbols of love in various contexts.

Lovebirds are native to Africa and belong to the parrot family. They are known for their vibrant plumage, distinctive beaks, and playful personalities. Lovebirds are highly social birds and form strong pair bonds, often staying together for life. They communicate with each other through various vocalizations and affectionate behaviors like grooming and feeding each other. Their close relationship and constant companionship make them a fitting symbol for love and the importance of nurturing relationships.

In many cultures and traditions, lovebirds are associated with romantic love and are often given as gifts to represent deep affection and commitment. They have been featured in art, literature, and poetry, symbolizing the beauty and joy of love. Lovebirds are also commonly depicted in wedding themes, representing the ideal of a harmonious and loving partnership.

While lovebirds are commonly associated with romantic love, they can also symbolize other types of love and relationships. Their loyalty and devotion can serve as a reminder of the importance of love and commitment in friendships, family bonds, and other meaningful connections. Lovebirds can inspire us to cherish and nurture the relationships that bring us love and happiness.

Overall, lovebirds are a powerful symbol of love, affection, and devotion. Their beauty, playful nature, and strong pair bonds make them a fitting representation of the love that exists between partners, friends, and loved ones. Whether in the form of pet birds or as symbolic representations, lovebirds remind us of the value of love and the joy that it brings to our lives.

Love Letter

A love letter is a timeless symbol of affection and devotion. It is a heartfelt expression of love, written with the intention of expressing deep emotions and romantic sentiments to a loved one. Love letters have been used throughout history to convey love, desire, longing, and commitment.

In a love letter, the writer often shares intimate thoughts and feelings, expressing their love and appreciation for their partner. The letter can be a declaration of love, an expression of gratitude, or a recounting of shared memories and experiences. It can also serve as a way to apologize or make amends, a means of resolution or reconciliation.

Love letters can be handwritten or typed, depending on personal preferences. The tone and style of the letter can vary, depending on the relationship dynamics and the emotions the writer wants to convey. Some love letters are poetic and flowery, while others are simple and direct. Ultimately, the goal is to communicate love and affection in a meaningful and heartfelt manner.

Writing a love letter allows individuals to express their deepest emotions and vulnerabilities in a personal and intimate way. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the relationship and express gratitude for the love and connection shared. Love letters can be cherished keepsakes, treasured for years to come, serving as a reminder of the love and emotional bond between two people.

Butterflies

Butterflies are often seen as symbolic of love and transformation. These delicate creatures are known for their vibrant colors and graceful flight, making them a beautiful representation of love and romance. Butterflies also symbolize growth and change, as they undergo a metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a butterfly.

In many cultures, butterflies are associated with the soul and are believed to carry messages from loved ones who have passed away. They are often seen as a sign that a departed loved one is watching over and sending love to those they left behind.

Butterflies are also seen as a symbol of hope and new beginnings. Their transformation from a crawling caterpillar to a flying butterfly represents the journey of personal growth and the possibility of positive change in one’s life. They serve as a reminder that even in the darkest times, there is always the potential for transformation and the emergence of something beautiful.

In the realm of love and relationships, butterflies are often associated with the feeling of being in love. The fluttering sensation that people describe when they are infatuated with someone is often referred to as “butterflies in the stomach.” This symbolizes the excitement and anticipation that accompanies the experience of falling in love.

In some traditions, butterflies are also seen as a symbol of happiness and joy. They are believed to bring luck and positive energy into a person’s life. Their vivid colors and graceful flight inspire feelings of joy and wonder, reminding us to appreciate the beauty and magic that surrounds us.

Overall, butterflies are a beloved symbol of love, transformation, hope, happiness, and the beauty of nature. They serve as a reminder to embrace change, cherish loved ones, and find joy in life’s journey.

In conclusion, symbols of love hold deep meaning and significance in our society. From the heart, which represents love and affection, to the rose, which symbolizes romance and beauty, these symbols have been used for centuries to express and celebrate love. Whether it’s the dove symbolizing peace and devotion, or Cupid representing desire and attraction, these symbols capture the essence of love in different ways.

While each symbol has its own unique interpretation, they all share a common theme – the power of love to bring joy, happiness, and connection to our lives. Whether it’s through the exchange of wedding rings, the fluttering of lovebirds, or the heartfelt words in a love letter, these symbols remind us of the beauty and strength of love. So, the next time you encounter one of these symbols, take a moment to appreciate the love and meaning they represent in our lives.

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Linda Callaway is a passionate history buff and researcher specializing in ancient history, symbolism, and dream interpretation. Her inquisitive nature has been a life-long pursuit, from her childhood days spent exploring the past, to her current academic studies of the ancient world. Linda has a strong interest in the symbolism associated with everyday objects, as well as the interpretation of dreams as a way to uncover hidden truths.

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Representations of love in the early stages of love

• Ivan Lukšík and Michaela Guillaume

Love, especially romantic and partnership love, has been a legitimate research theme in social science since the mid-twentieth century. In the research less attention is paid to how personal conceptions of love are formed within specific sociocultural contexts. One question that emerges in relation to social representations theory is: how are ideas about love, or knowledge of love, re-presented among particular social groups and which sociocultural resources are used in the process? In our questionnaire-based research we ascertained which perceptions, ideas and knowledge are prevalent among young people who are gaining their first experiences of partner relationships, what they consider love to be in their own context and what knowledge they have of love. The questionnaire was completed by 268 higher education students, who provided 38 representations of love, based on personal experience and linked to sociocultural sources of love.

Introduction

Love, particularly romantic love and partnership love, has been a popular research theme in social science since the mid-twentieth century. Since then love has been conceptualised and operationalised, and tools have been designed to measure it ( Hatfield et al., 2011 ; Karandashev & Clapp, 2015 ), while the models have become more complex (e.g. Karandashev & Clapp, 2015 ). Research has been conducted into the biological aspects of love, such as its links to the stress response system ( Mercado & Hibel, 2017 ). Sociocultural aspects have also been investigated, such as norms scripts, prototypical stories and the ideologies people are thought to draw on when forming their own ideas and stories about love ( Giddens, 1992 ). The psychological research on love is particularly strong (see the overview by Masaryk, 2012 ). Psychological discussions have tended to focus on the extent to which love is an emotion, what its characteristics are and what its constituent parts might be ( Masaryk, 2012 ). Love has also been considered as a means of self-reflection and identity moulding ( Mouton & Montijo, 2017 ). Also, ideas of love and partnership are studied ( Kraft & Witte, 1992 ). Discursive constructions of love is another research theme ( Watts & Stenner, 2013 ), and some interesting research has been conducted on the neurobiological and psychological contexts of love ( Feldman, 2012 ; Schneiderman et al., 2012 ). Alongside the more influential theories (Sternberg’s three components of love, which later became the duplex theory of love), provocative ones have emerged, such as “love as the transformative power of being in love” or as “an encounter of myth and drive” ( Lamy, 2015 )

Less attention has been focused on whether and how personal concepts of love tie into the sociocultural context. We can see how the many concepts, ideas and images of love are created and shared through literary and non-literary media, publishing and social networks. The visual culture created via the mass dissemination of an image-repertoire via the new technologies of image production has led to a “pictorial turn” ( Mitchell, 2017 ) and so, alongside verbal representations, non-verbal representation are becoming important as well. Although Mitchell is right to say that it is misleading to distinguish between “word and image”, since all representations are essentially a mix of the two, he admits the key issue is the power and effect of images (2017).

In our empirical research we concentrated on what young people think of love, how they write about it and whether it is a unique experience or if it is possible to identify any common characteristics. We also looked at whether some of the widespread knowledge, beliefs and myths about love apply to these expressions at the individual or group level. The theoretical framework employed in the research consisted of elements of social representations theory.

Social representations theory and its potential for investigating love

Moscovici first defined social representations as cognitive systems that have their own logic and language. They are systems of values, ideas and practices that have a twofold function: 1. to establish an order which will enable people to orientate themselves in their material and social world and master it; 2. to enable communication among social groups by providing a code for interacting, naming and unambiguously classifying the various aspects of their world and their individual and group history. S. Moscovici also stated that like scientific theories, religions or mythologies, social representations are representations of something else. They have their own specific content and vary in different spheres of life and in different societies. The social representations commonly adopted by a social group help shape that group’s identity ( Farr & Moscovici, 1984 ; Moscovici, 1973 ). In subsequent definitions Moscovici stressed that the symbolic and cognitive character of social representations is like a model of ideas, beliefs and symbolic behaviour or like culturally created artefacts that give meaning to human activity ( Moscovici, 2000 ). This definition of social representations differs from the definition of mental representations found in cognitive psychology, which largely concerns faithful images of segments of the world in the mind of the individual. I. Marková emphasises that the theory of social representations is based on dialogicality and representations are generated through tensions between the Ego, the Alter (another person, or group or society) and the object of the social representation. In structuring social representations some themata have been determined “essential to the survival and enhancement of humanity” ( Marková, 2003 , p.188). The so-called ‘basic themata’ are theorised as responding to ‘basic needs’ and ‘social drives’, such as the desire for social recognition, and may be implicated in the generation of many social representations, including those that seem to correspond to disparate phenomena” ( Marková, 2003 ).

Although there are a number of streams within social representations theory we base our research on the work of S. Moscovici and its further elaboration by I. Marková. We concentrate on the socially shared content and form of knowledge and the tensions between these, seeking out the themes around which this knowledge is organised and structured. However, we do not explore the meta-knowledge level disseminated in society, but look instead at the individual social representations operating at the individual level as referred to by Von Cranach (1995) . This concept is based on Von Cranach’s distinction between representations at the level of collective and individualized consciousness. The first one concerns social representation and the other individual social representation. We relate these individual social representations to their potential social source (through their social representations).

The theory of social representations and communication is concerned with specific types of representations. It deals with social phenomena that for some reason have become the subject of public interest and around which a theory is being constructed—issues of health and disease or environmental or physical phenomena, for instance. The phenomena that are debated and contemplated generate tension and lead to action ( I. Marková, 2003 ). If love is a social representation, then it follows that it should become the subject of public attention. This is not hard to verify by looking at consumerist non-aesthetic and aesthetic (literary) production. The second supposition is that the representation must be based on a source. This could be a cultural source, a myth, archetypal image, basic topic, or something that is handed down from one generation to the next largely unchanged. Another source of social representations could be scientific sources and popular versions of these, such as Sternberg’s Love is a Story , Fromm’s The Art of Loving . another potential source is a dialogue between the Ego, Alter (another person, group or society) and the object of the social representation, or in our case love ( I. Marková, 2003 ) [2] . It follows from this that discussing and writing about love should communicate something, generate something before our eyes and in our mind (which, is the French interpretation of representation, according to I. Marková, 2003 ).

Sociocultural sources of love

If we begin from the fact that, when forming their own ideas and knowledge of love, young people make use of sociocultural sources, then we have to ask what these might be. There is an abundance of sources. To start with there is the literature on this topic found in Slovak libraries (Slovak national bibliography), including genres such as fiction, Christian literature, popular songs, manuals, romances and partner relationships. This area deserves a more indepth analysis; however, for now we shall limit ourselves to three examples: 1. the Western myth of romantic love and its current form 2. the concept of Christian love, likely to be relevant in the sociocultural context of Slovakia, and 3. popular psychology concepts of love.

Western myth of romantic love and its current form

In his important book, Love in the Western World (1972), Denis de Rougemont examined the nature of passion-love ( amour passion ), which in the Western world has an antagonistic relationship with marital love. De Rougement considers passion and marriage to be incompatible; their parallel existence leads to irresolvable problems and conflicts that endanger “every one of our social safeguards” ( de Rougemont, 2001 , p. 213 [3] ). His rejection of adulterous passion-love is based not on the fact that it ignores the moral imperatives of Christian tradition, but on the malignant effects of a burning passion that brings suffering, tragedy and the risk of death. He thought the myth of Tristan and Isolde, with their passionate adulterous love affair and its tragic ending to be crucial in this respect. The persistence of this myth in romances and more recently in films has resulted in Western lyrics being enthused with amorous passion: “it swoops upon powerless and ravished men and women in order to consume them in a pure flame; … it is stronger and more real than happiness, society or morality” ( de Rougemont, 2001 , p. 21). Yet Western literature tells us nothing about happy love. The force of passion-love derives from the fact that it cannot be fully realised. Its energy grows as it becomes laden with obstacles; all the things that stand in the way of this love simultaneously foster and sanctify it. But de Rougemont also pointed out it was unreal under conditions of liberty: “The spontaneous ardour of a love crowned and not thwarted is essentially of short duration. It is a flare-up doomed not to survive the effulgence of its fulfillment. But its branding remains…”. ( de Rougemont, 2001 , p. 42).

In his exploration of contemporary forms of love, Giddens introduces a more up-to-date concept: that of “a pure relationship”—a relationship of emotional and sexual equality between partners. The contemporary democratised form of love owes its origins to older concepts. While the passion-love of the past showed itself to be uncontrollable and even dangerous, romantic love was more stable and became an appropriate unit of cohabitation. Romantic love incorporated elements of Christian moral values, absorbing passion-love and becoming a form of cultivated love ( Giddens, 1992 ). It ceased to be an unreal enchantment and became a potential route to controlling the future, a form of psychological security for those entering into it. For the majority of the normal population love was associated with marriage; couples today are increasingly connected in what is referred to as a partnership. Giddens (1992) defines a pure relationship as one “entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it”. The distant echoes of romantic love brush up against pure relationships and come together in “confluent love”. This latter involves the partners being open with one another, and it is an active, conditional kind of love. It evolves only to the extent that intimacy evolves; in so far as one partner is prepared to reveal their anxieties and needs to the other, and to expose their vulnerabilities. It and erotic love constitute the core of the relationship and the ability to provide mutual sexual satisfaction within it is decisive, determining whether it continues to exist or to die. In a confluent relationship, erotic love forms the core, and the capacity for mutual sexual satisfaction is crucial, determining its continued existence or demise.

However, research findings ( D. Marková, 2012 ) show that in Slovakia, Giddens’s concept of a “pure relationship” is still by and large an idealistic partner relationship. His premise that pure relationships are not based on external criteria, institutions, exterior norms or duties and dependency, but on mutual feelings and emotional gains does not seem to be an accurate reflection of the Slovak reality. It is true that the research found that partners wanted good quality relationships, communication and so forth, but external criteria, obligations and so on were also relevant, indicating that there is still a tendency to favour traditional relationships in Slovakia. As far as value preferences are concerned, D. Marková (2014 , 2015a , 2015b ,) found a variety of moral preferences in sexual and partner relationships, but also that the prevailing moral ideal in sexual and partner relations is a relationship based on values such as love, fidelity and responsibility. This ideal also included some of the emotional and relational aspects of Giddens’s partnership, such as emotional understanding, trust, mutual respect, openness, intimacy and closeness.

Concept of Christian love

The concept of Christian love is common in Slovakia. A glance at the Slovak national library catalogues, which contain the most representative collection of publications found in Slovak libraries, shows that Christian love is the second largest theme after literature.

There are two main kinds of love in Christianity: “love thy neighbour as thyself” and marital love. The agape concept of love—love for thy neighbour—comes from the Judaeo-Christian tradition and is found in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. The Judaeo-Christian concept of neighbourly love is found in the Old Testament and in the Torah. This basic concept of the value and importance of love for our neighbours is found in all the holy books of these three religions. Nonetheless, it has a specific meaning in Christianity. Agape is described as the love God gives to man first in the expectation that he will give the same love to those around him. In the New Testament love takes on a new quality in the Jewish commandment “love they neighbour”. Here it is no longer simply a command meaning love thy neighbour from the same tribe ( Nygren, 1953 , Aslanian, 2018 ), but has been extended to embrace the concept of the universal neighbour. The command to love thy neighbour refers to all “others” and exhorts us to let the differences between us and others dissolve away ( Steinhouse, 2013 ).

According to Možný (1990 , p. 64) “the fact that Christianity defined the relationship between husband and wife as love is its most important historical contribution”. Marital love means that a man should love his wife as he does his own body. The man is responsible for his wife’s spiritual wellbeing. Love means taking responsibility for the happiness and therefore the spiritual wellbeing of the other. This kind of love need not be erotic; nor should it be egotistic or hedonistic. But in essence erotic love was driven out of marriage ( Možný, 1990 ).

Popular psychological concepts of love

One of the most important sources of representations of love is psychology, a field where a great deal of research and theorising has been done on love ( Masaryk, 2012 ). In Slovak the psychological aspects of love are most frequently found in the books of E. Fromm, J. Sternberg, J. Willi, I. Štúr, M. Plzák, and more recently J. Prekopová (Slovak national bibliography) and others. We will now look more closely at the first two examples which are more prominent in the Slovak environment.

Sternberg (1995 , 2008 ) bases his theory around the fact that people have a specific idea about love (they have their own story of love), and they expect their own relationship to resemble it. If both partners have the same idea of that story, then no matter how peculiar the relationship, or even absurd to others, their shared story—their love—will work. But if their ideas of the story differ, the relationship will begin to fall apart, no matter how harmoniously it develops or seems to others. Sternberg begins from the Kantian premise that it is impossible to know the definitive essence (truth), and then goes on state that in reality fact cannot be clearly separated from fiction, because we adjust the facts of the relationship to reflect our own personal fictions. Although we may feel we are gradually getting to know our partner better, that need not be the case. It could be that we are creating a story that has less and less in common with what that person is really like. The process of getting to know the other person affects the ideas, feelings and wisdoms that we have acquired along with our emotional baggage from the past. Sternberg thinks that in principle our stories are influenced by the environment and culture in which we live, so our stories can change over time and across space. We spend our whole lives listening to and being aware of various stories about love, and we can draw on all these stories when we create our own ones.

Fromm thought love was the only true and permanent solution to questions about the depths of a person’s essence, and that is the need “to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness” (1956, p. 9). This feeling of separation and the finality of natural laws causes people to feel anxious about being excluded. None of these solutions, however, are permanent or even complete, since they do not ensure a true connection with other people. This human need can only be fully realised, thought Fromm, through love and by becoming one with another person (p. 29). He considers love to be an activity and so falling or “standing in” love (p. 22) is impossible. Love’s most basic characteristic is giving not taking, but giving , he warns, is often misunderstood to be a process whereby you have to forfeit something or make a sacrifice . In love giving without getting anything in return brings joy. Erotic (partner) love is exclusive, unlike fraternal or maternal love. It is an act of will. It is the decision to devote the rest of your life to another person. Fromm notes that a degree of confusion entered twentieth century perceptions of love, with love being seen as an object problem rather than a skill problem . People search for the right object so they can be loved, but what is essential, according to Fromm, is realising that love is an art (a skill) and that it has to be mastered just like any other skill ( Fromm, 1956 ).

Methodology

Research questions.

We asked the following research questions: what knowledge, ideas, beliefs and images of love do young people have based on their initial experiences of partner relationships? Which of these are common among young people, which dominate and which are individual? How are they structured? What sources do young people draw on in articulating them?

Bearing in mind the above research questions and our use of social representations theory as a theoretical framework, and given that social representations of love is an under-researched area, we decided to adopt an explorative research plan.

In her research on social representations Plichtová (2002) recommends the researcher should begin by investigating the ideas of specific individuals and how these are embedded in everyday existence. In our study we adopted an inductive approach, in which we used a thematic content analysis beginning with the individual responses, definitions and experiences of love and working our way to more general categories.

The research tool was a questionnaire survey with open questions. We electronically distributed an anonymous questionnaire to which respondents could answer freely. In it young people were asked: 1. What they thought love was, or what they thought suggested love, given what they had observed in their social milieu 2. Which associations, memories, did they make or have in relation to love 3. Had they come across works of art or artistic performances that represented love [4] and lastly 4. How would they briefly explain what love was to someone. In this research we analysed the written responses to questions 1, 2 and 4, which target the social and individual representations; question 3 was not part of this analysis.

Research sample

The research participants were 264 full-time students at five higher education institutions in Slovakia (Bratislava, Trnava, Banská Bystrica, Nitra and Prešov). The vast majority of the respondents were women (91.7%). The most frequent subjects studied were: education—general (33.7%), psychology (9.5%), ethics, ethics education (7.5%), media studies (5.3%), languages (4.9%), education—subject-based (4.9%) and social work (4.2%). The percentage of research participants declaring they were religious was 78.4%. Regarding sexual orientation, 95.8% stated they were heterosexual, 2.7% bisexual and 0.8% homosexual. The majority were single and in a relationship (64.4%), while 32.3% were single and not in a relationship, and 3.4% were married. The participants were most likely to have had two partner relationships (27.3%), followed by one (26.1%), three (16.7%) and four (12.1%). The most frequent number of short-term partner relationships was one (27.7%), followed by none (25.0%), two (17.4%) and three (6.4%). Most were or had been involved in one longterm partner relationship (48.5%), followed by two (21.6%), none (9.5%) and three (6.4%). Participants with children represented 1.5% of the sample.

Method of analysis

We considered a thematic content analysis to be the most suitable theoretical framework and inductive approach for the analysis in this research. Within described epistemology, an inductive thematic analysis (ITA) was proved to be a suitable approach ( Braun & Clark, 2006 ). In practical terms, we focused on the “bottom-up way”, i.e. the identification and coding of themes emerging from the text. In the final stage of the analysis we looked for the structure of the themes based on the content and language connections.

In the first phase, researchers conducted an initial marking of text passages (initial coding). Individual passages of text were assigned a number of codes. During the coding process, researchers coordinated their codes. At this stage, 44 different love themes were identified. The data coding was performed by four students (first stage only) who had attended a course on data methodology and processing, and two researchers (the authors of this article). In the first stage of coding the six of us independently analysed the first 25 respondents’ answers and then the second 25. Meetings were held during the coding process to ensure there was agreement on the coding (92% at the end of the first coding stage). The remaining responses were coded independently by student pairs and the senior researchers also coded a selection. The codings were then compared at meetings (agreement of 87%– 95%).

Then in the second phase the two researchers independently created the second order categories which were again compared, recategorised and categories were joined together. Where the categories were unclear we returned to the initial responses, and so forth. In the end, the researchers agreed on 38 categories that captured the meaning of the clusters of love obtained from the research sample. The results of this analysis are in Table 1 .

Representations of love among higher education students

In the third phase based on similarities in the content and language of the themes two researchers selected themes that formed a coherent and structured line. This led to the creation of Diagram 1 .

Individual social representations of love among higher education students: lines and structure [6]

The analysis described above revealed 38 individual social representations of love [5] , shown in the table below.

Subsequent analysis revealed the relationships between the various individual social representations and the structure they created. This led to three lines of representations: 1. physical closeness and being in tune, 2. transcendental love, and 3. inner harmony and the meaning of life (see Diagram 1 ). The first line is the strong representation of physical love, love as emotion and love as reciprocity, and then there are more minor representations branching off: love as a state of ecstasy, fleeting love and togetherness. In the second line love is strongly represented as a norm and commitment, as self-sacrifice, prosocialness, and as certainty and security. On the third line we placed love as inner harmony and freedom. As can be seen in Diagram 1, there are smaller interlinking representations. For example love as a bond and co-creation link the first and second lines together, while love as decision and to some extent prosocialness link the second and third lines.

Variety and structure of representations of love

The analysis revealed 38 representations of love. New representations were still being found towards the end of the coding process. This may be an instance of the dialogicality of thinking, described by I. Marková, who states that dialogic thinking is characterised by polyphasia, that is, the multifaceted or even oppositional nature of thinking. One of our categories reflects this multifaceted aspect (19). Even in our case it seems that cognitive polyphasia leads to the use of varied and often very distinctive ways of thinking and types of knowledge, such as popular science (love as emotion), ordinary sharing (e.g. love as reciprocity and love as togetherness), religious (love=God) and metaphor (looking for the heart’s other half). This could also be an example of Bakhtin’s “heteroglossia of language that relates to divergent styles of speech stemming from the infinite openness of language in various specific situations” ( I. Marková, 2007 , pp. 152-153). The young people described love as an encounter between two people who feel the same way, as the communion of two souls and two bodies or the joining of two hearts. Karandashev and Clapp (2015) also refer to a similar breadth of representations of love, although they call them mental representations. Their dimensions of these representations of love that resemble our representations are affection, comfort, commitment, communion, companionship, concern, elation, empathy, forgiveness, intimacy, obsession, protection, reciprocity, sharing, trust and understanding. The wide range of representations of love clearly relates to the breadth and changing nature of partner relationships and sexual lifestyles ( Lukšík & D. Marková, 2012 ; D. Marková, 2012 , 2015a , b ). One of the lines of representations of love—passionate and socialised love—largely linked to personal experience, is only weakly influenced by normative social instruments, bringing it closer to Giddens’s “pure relationships”, particularly the aspects we labelled reciprocity and togetherness.

Our results do not appear to support Sternberg’s concept of love ( Sternberg, 2008 ), in which ideas on love are considered to be holistic, intuitively story-based, illogical and spontaneous. Although our respondents’ answers were shaped by the questionnaire method we used, only in exceptional cases, when they have to characterise love, do young people give stories as examples. Nor did we find many connections with Sternberg’s 27 love stories, other than stories of self-sacrifice and of dependence. But we should note that young people of this age still have limited experience, and stories require time to develop. In addition to time the protagonists need both the maturity and the ability to identify and name the specific features of a relationship. These often become clear only once they have arisen in other relationships.

In addition to finding a rich array of social and individual representations of love among young people, we also identified the structure connecting the various representations. Three lines of representations were found: 1. Physical closeness and being in tune, 2. Transcendental love, and 3. Inner harmony and meaning. Each of these contained dominant representations such as love as sentiment, physical love, reciprocity, love as a norm, commitment, and love as inner harmony; and further smaller representations can be linked to these or develop from these ( Diagram 1 ). It is only through further research that we will be able to establish whether these three lines are in some way connected to the basic themes or social representations of love. In this research we did not explore the opposite representations that might constitute these themes ( I. Marková, 2007 ). However, opposites such as self-love versus personal or transcendental love, love as being in tune versus love as a struggle could be examples of these.

Sources of social representations

Although our analysis of sociocultural sources of love is just preliminary, it has revealed some connections to contemporary forms of the Western myth of love as well as to Christian love and psychological conceptions of love (in this case E. Fromm’s). The strong representations of love we identified among young people can be arranged into three lines that correspond to the sociocultural sources of love analysed. The first line— physical closeness , being in tune , —is compared to the written source, a more physical, emotional and socialised type of love than the tragic passion-love described by de Rougemont (1972) . The love of passionate flaming is close to the meanings of love as state of ecstasy and fleeting love. This line is closer to what Giddens (1992) describes as a “pure relationship” relating to similar meanings of love, like reciprocity, togetherness, and relationship in particular.

With the meanings of love as a relationship and bond and love as co-creation, this line is interconnected with the second line of individual social representations— transcendental love . The second, line transcendental love may only marginally refer to marital love and not at all to “love thy neighbour” love, but it has a number of indirect features that show it is linked to Christian love. Love is defined as being a commitment to faithfulness, devotion, respect and so forth, and it is also prosocial or social in a positive sense and contains representations of love such as certainty and security, often expressed using the mother–child image. The question is to what extent this line of representations of love is simply the ideal norm and to what extent it is real life, as D. Marková (2012 , 2015a , b ) has pointed out. The third inner harmony and meaning , where we placed love as inner harmony, liberating, prosocialness and love as a decision is closer to Fromm’s concept of love.

The results show a large variety of representations of love among higher education students. In addition to finding a rich array of social and individual representations of love among young people, we also identified the structure connecting the various representations. Three lines of representations were found: 1. Physical closeness and being in tune, 2. Transcendental love, and 3. Inner harmony and meaning. Each of these contained dominant representations such love as sentiment, physical love, love as reciprocity, love as a norm, commitment and love as inner harmony; further smaller representations can be linked to or develop from these. It is only through further research that we will be able to establish whether these three lines are in some way connected to the basic themes or social representations of love.

Although the analysis of the sociocultural sources of love was only preliminary in nature, it has revealed certain connections between the social representations of love and the contemporary forms of the Western myth of love, and Christian love and psychological conceptions of love (in our case E. Fromm’s theory). A deeper analysis of the socio-cultural environment is needed. The representations of love we identified bear features of the dialogicality of thinking, as described by I. Marková (2003) . A deeper qualitative analysis is, however, required to confirm this. The results should also be viewed in relation to the fact the sample comprised students and with regard to the fact that they are just embarking on their partnerships, or as we rather ambitiously referred to them in the title in the “early stages of love”. Further research using participants with more extensive experience of partnership life and a deeper qualitative analysis are also required.

1 Grant support: VEGA grant Psychological , sociocultural and biological sources of love , no. 1/0426/18

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Article contents

Sexual representation, visual.

• John R. Clarke
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8064
• Published online: 27 February 2017

This article treats visual representations of sex between human beings, hypersexual humans and demigods, and phalli in terms of their meanings for ancient Greeks and Romans and their viewing contexts. Building on the research of scholars holding that contemporary concepts of sexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality have no bearing on ancient attitudes and can only lead to anachronistic judgements if applied to the ancient world, the aim is to combine the evidence of classical texts with that of visual representations to determine the meanings of so-called erotica for ancient viewers. Many portrayals deemed pornographic by modern standards constituted proper decoration, whether they appear in the frescoed interiors of Roman houses or on drinking vessels, mirrors, and gemstones. Artists also created hypersexual creatures such as pygmies, Priapus, and Hermaphroditus primarily as apotropaia; representations of the phallus and of phallic deities installed on the streets and in the shops of cities had a similar apotropaic function.

• homosexuality
• bisexuality
• pornography
• apotropaion

Hermaphroditus

• Gender Studies
• Greek Material Culture
• Roman Material Culture

The Cultural Construction of Sexuality

To analyze Greek and Roman visual representations having to do with what we (contemporary Euro-Americans) term “sex” is to enter a world having little correspondence with our own. Ancient constructions of sexuality, gender, and the rules of sexual engagement differ significantly from our own. One finds no conception of pornography in the modern sense of the term; what is more, one finds outrageous sexual imagery used for apotropaic purposes. Nearly every attitude toward sex coming from current Euro-American culture would be foreign to ancient viewers of sexual representation. It is only since the 1970s that classical scholarship, following the lead of cultural anthropology, has abandoned the essentialist view that the ancients were “just like us” with regard to sexuality. For example, an essentialist approach assumes that if sex between adult men and pubescent boys is taboo in contemporary Euro-American culture, it was taboo in ancient Greece and Rome. Some essentialists have argued that because there are self-identified gay men in our culture, there were gay subcultures in antiquity. 1

Michel Foucault challenged the essentialist approach, arguing that what we call “sexuality” is a cultural construction arising from the process of acculturation, or attitude formation. 2 Since this process is deeply ingrained, individuals within a culture are unaware of the arbitrary nature of the rules that govern sexual behavior. Complementary to and advancing Foucault’s work has been feminist scholarship in the classics, following the lead of Judith Butler’s research on the construction of gender. 3 Cultural constructionists have demonstrated that, because the rules governing sexual behavior in ancient Greece and Rome arose from cultural forces different from ours, it is impossible to interpret any ancient representation according to our contemporary standards and beliefs.

For this reason, one cannot use visual representations—as many popular picture books have attempted—to prove that Greeks and Romans were “just like us” with regard to what we call “sexuality,” and that they had conceptions like ours of heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and pornography. Indeed, these words are inventions of the latter half of the 19th century . 4 Current scholarly work looks to the contexts provided by classical texts, graffiti, and archaeology to understand the meanings of sexual imagery in terms of ancient Greek and Roman acculturation.

“Erotica” and the Invention of Pornography

Modern misinterpretation of sexually explicit visual representations began in the Renaissance, as wealthy gentlemen assembled collections of “erotica,” including Greek and Roman sculpture, vase paintings, mosaics, ceramics, small bronzes, amulets, and gems with sexual subject matter. Such objects proliferated with the Spanish Bourbon monarchs’ excavations of Herculaneum (beginning in 1738 ) and Pompeii (beginning in 1748 ) and added new classes of objects, including frescoes representing frank sexual intercourse as well as bronze phalli with bells ( tintinnabula ). As the Royal Museum at Portici filled with such objects, the king and his ministers kept tight control over visitors, admitting only gentlemen of high social standing. They also closely monitored the study and publication of objects considered “obscene” by the standards of the time.

In 1819 Francis I Bourbon ordered Michele Arditi to sequester the obscene objects from the collection; even so, Arditi published a study of the phallic objects, correctly identifying them as apotropaic devices. 5 It was only in 1839 , with the eighth volume of Herculanum et Pompéi , that the sexual representations in the Cabinet of Obscene Objects were published. 6 As public museums formed throughout Europe, many had their own “Secret Museums” to house objects that challenged current moral standards. 7 It was the problem of finding a word to describe such visual indecencies that prompted Karl Otfried Müller to repurpose the word “pornography” to denote obscene sexual representations. 8 To an ancient Greek or Roman, the pornographer was a man who wrote about famous prostitutes. The meaning of the word changed slightly during the Enlightenment, when budding social scientists studied prostitutes and prostitution as a social phenomenon. After Müller’s publication, however, the word “pornography” in its new meaning slowly entered the vocabulary of European languages. It served the polemics around the concept that visual or textual representations of sex could corrupt susceptible individuals. Indeed, the history of the opening and closing of collections of “erotica” mirrors modern sexual attitudes toward the pornographic. 9

By separating objects considered obscene by current moral standards from other objects in collections—and indeed from their original archaeological contexts—the Secret Museums contributed to the formation of the modern categories of “erotica” and “pornography.” In their attempt to explain ancient sexual representations through the lens of their own standards of sexual behavior and morality, essentialist accounts are anachronistic; they also often fail to distinguish between representations that were probably sexually stimulating for ancient viewers and those that were meant to have different effects: apotropaic images, half-animal demigods (Pan, satyrs, Silenus), and deities with unusual sexual traits ( Priapus , Hermaphroditus ).

Archaic and Classical Greece

Attic black- and red-figure vases of the Archaic and early Classical periods present a variety of representations of explicit sex between human beings. 10 Between 575 and 475 bce , when they disappear entirely, we find images of men pursuing boys, including offering gifts, touching, kissing, and rubbing penises between the thighs (intercrural intercourse). 11 Images of men and women follow a similar pattern but begin a decade later, reaching their zenith in the second decade of the 5th century bce and continuing to the end of the century. Although these representations have received ample analysis in terms of their subject matter, it is still the case that some scholars ignore how the limitations and conventions of the medium prevented artists from representing these encounters realistically. Compositions in both techniques favor silhouettes, resulting in a decided preference for profile views and avoidance of perspective foreshortening. The principle that artists look for models in other art rather than creating representations ex novo applies here and accounts for the repetition of stock motifs. 12 For example, artists replicated the “up and down” pose, with the man chucking his prospective lover’s chin with one hand while fondling the genitals with the other, to communicate an advanced stage in the courting process. There is little free invention either of poses or activities—both reminders that a scholar wanting to understand the sexual practices arising from acculturation will have to look beyond these visual representations to interpret them accurately. 13

A case in point is the approach to the many images of man-boy, or erastes - eromenos , courtship and sexual intercourse. Because artists almost invariably show intercrural intercourse, some scholars have insisted that man-boy couples did not engage in anal intercourse, even though it is clear from textual sources that they did. 14 Another question that the images on vase paintings fail to answer is that of the ideal age of the eromenos. There is an almost equal mix of eromenoi who are clearly young boys and others who look to be about the same age as their lovers. At times artists minimize the identifying mark of the erastes, his beard. The age gap could be as little as three or four years, since the boy became an ephebe, and therefore a sexual prize, at thirteen and continued in that status until eighteen.

Several of these conventions appear on a little cup (a kantharos or karchesion), where the artist has created a clever narrative. 15 On one side the erastes is performing the “up and down” exploration of a very young boy; on the other the delighted eromenos jumps up to hug his erastes. The artist has pushed a bit beyond convention by having the boy chuck his lover’s beard while the man touches his genitals; the man’s left arm rests on the boy’s shoulders. Wine is also the subject, as the exuberant vines that frame the couple on both sides indicate.

The development of the red-figure technique painting allowed artists to show more detail in their figures. Whereas in the earlier technique they had to incise internal linear details within the solid black figure, in the new technique they were able to paint those details with a brush directly within the silhouette. Fluid lines rather than stiff scratches defined anatomy, drapery, and a host of animals and objects. On the exterior of a fine kylix (Fig. 1 ) by a painter named Peithinos (“Persuasion”) we see men courting both boys and women, with both the erastes and the objects of their affections standing and facing each other. Unlike the cup described above, where the difference in age between the erastes and eromenos is clear, Peithinos gives little indication of a difference in age: they are the same height, and the beards of the adult lovers are scant. The artist depicts a variety of emotions with masterly control of gesture and facial expression. Peithinos uses drapery to heighten the sensuality of the closest encounters, including a couple performing intercrural intercourse.

Figure 1. Red-figure kylix. Men courting boys and women, c. 500 bce , by Peithinos. Antikensammlung Berlin, F 2279. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.

In scenes representing both courting and intercrural intercourse, artists represent the protagonists standing and in profile. Other sexual activities that the erastes and the eromenos may have engaged in are absent from the visual record. There is certainly a deep-seated cultural reason for so limiting these representations: both parties are elite citizen males, and their bodies cannot be penetrated. Their hexis is to be strong and upright. 16

Not so, of course, for women, whom Greek men cast as sexually voracious and desiring to be penetrated. Perhaps it is for this reason that the frankest and most inventive images of intercourse appear in representations of the orgies that culminated the all-male symposium, when the female entertainers arrived. Between these two poles of the relatively sedate man-boy representations, and the all-out, no-holds-barred scenes of citizen males debasing prostitutes, is a group showing one-on-one sex between a man and a woman or girl. 17 Couples appear for the most part in profile view, most often with the man penetrating the woman from behind, perhaps anally. A composition that appears in two versions, one with a man and a girl, the other with a young man and a boy, drives home the point about artists’ use of visual conventions. 18 In both cases the man sits in a low chair and displays a substantial erection. Both the boy and the girl climb up on the chair, steadying themselves on their lover’s shoulder, so that they can mount the man’s penis. To switch the genders of the receptive partners was a relatively easy task for the artist, once the model of this composition became available. Ceramic artists in the Hellenistic and Roman periods take a similar approach; they retain the standard composition of a man penetrating a boy or girl, changing only the genitals and breasts to identify the sex of the object of his affection. 19

For the images of heterosexual intercourse that focus on orgies with paid female sex workers (the common porne or the geisha-like hetaira ), it is well to remember that they required a vase painter to marshal all his skills to depict multi-figural groups, symposium furniture, and complex sexual positions. The much-discussed kylix in the Louvre, attributed to the Pedieus painter, includes double penetration (anal and oral) of an older prostitute, spanking, and forced fellatio. 20 To a citizen male these images may have seemed transgressive and even humorous, but they rang true to his beliefs. They reinforced the homosocial setting par excellence, the symposium, where men gathered to converse, to drink, and to be entertained by flute girls, dancers, pornai , and perhaps hetairai . Pedieus paints a kind of sexual carnival for the pleasure of the man who drank from this cup, a scenario that may have upset the usual rules of sexual behavior encoded in Athenian law and literature. Nevertheless, the artist’s depiction of the voracious woman—even though probably of low or even slave status—was one that citizen males applied, mutatis mutandis , to all women, including their wives and daughters. A similar mentality comes through in representations of women fondling dildoes or being penetrated by macrophallic satyrs—all reflecting the Classical Greek notion (found in texts written by men) that women were sexually insatiable.

Satyrs and Centaurs

Sexualized demigods play an important role in visual representation in this period. In particular, the wild sexual exploits of satyrs —chasing maenads, having anal intercourse with each other, and masturbating—constitute a major theme in red- and black-figure vase painting. Scholars have variously cast these representations of sexual abandon among the retinue of Dionysus as an enactment of repressed sexual desire or as an index of Greek male attitudes toward women. 21 The macrophallic, unrestrained satyr is, however, a monster in relation to Greek somatic and sexual ideals; clear evidence from both texts and visual representation reveals that the ideal penis was small, with a tight foreskin. 22 Not only is the huge penis laughable, so is the satyr’s improper animal sexuality.

Centaurs, hybrid animal-human creatures like the satyrs, become famously incontinent at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia. Their attempted rape of the Lapith women is an important theme in Greek visual art (e.g., east pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia), and the battle of the centaurs and Lapiths becomes a potent metaphor for the triumph of Greek civilization and restraint over foreign barbarity. 23

Yet another sexualized body, that of the pygmy, appears in the visual art of this period. The images of the pygmy created by Greek (and later Roman) artists have no real connection to the ethnic pygmy, associated with peoples of Central Africa. 24 Instead, artists created a representation of a human with the characteristics of disproportionate dwarfism to act the role of the Other. This pygmy type—short, misshapen, and macrophallic—constituted, like the satyr, the diametric opposite of Greek somatic ideals. A Greek would see the ugliness of this pygmy as the probable cause of his unbecoming behavior. In a broad range of scenarios that begin in the visual record with black-figure vase painting, pygmies play the fool. Animals (crocodiles and cranes) attack and torment them; the males are almost always macrophallic and ithyphallic, targeting both other males and females. The Romans expand upon these comic scenarios in the visual arts of the 1st century ce .

Romantic Sexual Encounters in the 4th Century

In the late Classical art of the 4th century bce , representations of the post-symposium orgy disappear, to be replaced by images of one-on-one sex. Several of these representations adorn mirrors and mirror cases, pointing to a woman viewer, and present male-female couples in handsomely appointed bedchambers. Instead of unflattering portrayals of prostitutes being coerced into nonstandard sexual acts, we find attractive women who are the equals of their male partners in achieving the maximum mutual pleasure in intercourse. Artists employ poses, gestures, and gazes that emphasize the specialness of the encounter in an attempt to make the encounter romantic. Several scholars see this move to one-on-one sex as a reflection of the turn away from the collective society of the patriarchal polis to the individual self-awareness that characterizes the rise of Hellenistic urban culture. 25 Given the urban density and cultural diversity of great cities like Alexandria and Pergamon, romantic visual representations, like the textual ones expressed in the romance novel, express new concepts of love and sex.

In one of the best-preserved examples, the exterior of a bronze mirror case from Corinth (Fig. 2 ), the artist has included the god Eros hovering above a handsome couple on a luxuriously appointed bed, reminding us of the widely held belief that sex with a beautiful partner was a gift of Venus. The artist emphasizes mutual enthusiasm by representing the woman as actively engaged in the act of lovemaking; she opens her legs to increase penetration even while turning her head to kiss the man. The image incised on the back of the mirror cover foregrounds the woman’s active engagement (and the artist’s representational skills) more fully: she adroitly assumes the “lioness” position, supporting her upper body with her left arm while raising her buttocks to reveal her genitalia. 26 With her right hand she guides the man’s penis. One scholar suggests that a famous courtesan, Leiana, owned the mirror. 27 It is more plausible, since it is of bronze rather than silver or gold, that it was the possession of a married or unmarried Corinthian woman, especially since it expresses contemporary beliefs that a woman must achieve orgasm both to conceive healthy babies and to remain healthy herself.

Figure 2. Male-female couple with Eros, exterior of a mirror case, bronze, diam. 17.5 cm, c. 320 bce , from Corinth. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Edward Perry Warren, RES 08. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.

Serial Sexual Imagery and Man-Boy Love in the Hellenistic Period (323–331 bce )

The Hellenistic fascination with encyclopedic cataloguing of the natural world finds textual expression in the largely lost illustrated sex manuals, all attributed to celebrated famous prostitutes but probably authored by men. 28 In visual representation, we find vessels of terracotta and glass, made from molds and therefore produced in multiple editions, that catalogue a variety of sexual positions, many of them acrobatic. 29 One example, a fragment of a mold-made glass bowl (Fig. 3 ), originally demonstrated a total of twelve sexual positions in relief on its interior, with an additional image of the “woman riding” position on the exterior. A couple assuming the same pose as the mirror cover in Fig. 2 decorates part of the bottom of the dish, while another couple in the missionary position adorns the rim of the vessel.

Figure 3. Two male-female couples, fragment of opaque molded glass dish, length 5.5 cm, first century bce . Metropolitan Museum of Art 1995.86. Gift of Nicolas Koutoulakis.

In the Hellenistic period, the visual representation of man-boy sex shifts toward the romantic as well. If artists set pederastic encounters in Archaic and Classical Athens in public places like the gymnasium, with the lovers standing, they now recline, like male-female couples, in beds. Artists make a point of showing the boy being penetrated by the man while they exchange tender gazes. Two examples of this composition adorned mass-produced mold-made terracotta vessels, an indication that there was considerable demand for such representations. 30

A cut agate gemstone dating to the 1st century bce , by contrast, represents a private commission, not only because of the expense of producing such objects but also in light of its subject matter: an adult man anally penetrating another adult man, posed so that a viewer can see his erect penis. Framing this image is an affectionate poem addressed to one of the men. 31 Although explicit and contrary to the accepted rules of engagement between male sexual partners, the gemstone underscores the exploration of new ways of representing sexual intercourse during the Hellenistic period that paved the way for artists of the early Roman imperial period.

As artists of the Hellenistic period explored non-classical bodies, like those of children, the barbarian Other, and the aged, representations of Hermaphroditus began to proliferate. 32 In both literature and visual representation, Hermaphroditus complicates the standard Greek construction of woman as sexually insatiable, emphasizing instead the dynamics of desire. As a demigod with characteristics of both sexes and the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite, Hermaphroditus is a sign of gender fusion. In the hands of Hellenistic artists, he/she confuses viewers in humorous double-takes redolent with sexual frustration.

One sculptural type of the sleeping Hermaphroditus presents the god prone, with elegantly coifed head turned to the right. A viewer initially admired the beautiful back, buttocks, and legs, but circling the sculpture discovered the creature’s female breasts combined with penis and testicles. 33 In a series of frescoes from Pompeian houses, a Silenus or Pan enacts this discovery of Hermaphroditus’s dual nature, as he comes upon him/her from behind. The viewer sees the demigod’s erect penis presumably before the would-be rapist. Another composition meant to elicit surprise and repeated across the media of sculpture, painting, and mosaic depicts Hermaphroditus struggling with a satyr, eager to rape despite the creature’s binary sexual makeup. 34 The elaboration of these scenarios in the Hellenistic period points to an identification of gender with genitals, much like the fascination with Priapus, satyrs, and pygmies with monstrous penises. In 1st-century ce Pompeii, there appear images of Priapus in the form of sculpture placed in gardens and small paintings positioned over doorways in houses. 35 The demigod seems—perhaps because of his/her sexual duality—to have acquired an apotropaic function.

Augustan and Early Julio-Claudian Representations ( c. 31 bce –30 ce )

The proliferation of sexual representations on a variety of objects in this period coincides with the rapid growth of the city of Rome and the provincial capitals of the early empire. As in the Hellenistic period, sexual imagery appears in a variety of media, from expensive gemstones and silver vessels to terracotta vessels mass-produced in the workshops of Arretium (modern Arezzo) (Fig. 4 ). These vessels imitate the sexual imagery to be found on expensive drinking ware, usually representing beautiful male-female couples assuming a variety of sexual positions. Some Arretine vessels alternate images of male-female intercourse with lovemaking between a man and a boy. This seemingly unbiased alternation of sexual representation suggests that Roman viewers of the lower classes valued and saw the equivalence of these two kinds of love. Imagery on these inexpensive vessels reflect similar, bisexual decorations on luxury items, like a cut cameo-glass perfume bottle, currently in the Ortiz collection, which came out of the ground in 1978 . 36 One side shows a man kneeling on a bed and the woman turned to him, her back and buttocks on display; on the opposite side we see the boy’s torso and genitals as his lover kneels behind him to enter him. The boy turns his head to gaze at the man and reaches back with his right arm to grasp the man’s right arm. It is a pose that finds wide diffusion in the Augustan period for scenes of a man penetrating a young boy. 37 A variation of this composition appears on side B of the Warren Cup (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 ), where both look away rather than exchanging gazes. An important anomaly shared by the Ortiz bottle and the Warren Cup is the hairstyle of the boys in both compositions. They have long locks of hair falling down the nape of the neck, indicating their servile status. 38 Literary sources confirm that an elite Roman man was expected to be bisexual, alternating between penetrating boys (the pueri delicati ) and girls and women, but that his partners could not be of his own class or freeborn (Plaut. Curc. 35–38). Since boys who conformed to this status were limited to the servile class, we can expect that the artists of the Warren Cup and the Ortiz flask were both representing beautiful slave boys.

Figure 4. Male-female and man-boy couple with ithyphallic herm between them, Arretine mold fragment, 30 bce –30 ce . Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of E. P. Warren, RES. 08.33c. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Figure 5. Man-boy couple on bed, Warren Cup, side B, 15-30 ce , silver, height 15.2 cm. British Museum, 1999, 0426.1.

Side A of the Warren Cup shows a young man lowering his buttocks onto his lover’s penis while supporting himself with a strap. The men’s neo-classical proportions with the same Polycleitan body types as seen on the Arretine ware combine with Augustan hairstyles (no long locks to be seen) to emphasize their beauty. The setting, too, is redolent of luxury, including a lyre resting on a shelf and a chamber-servant who looks on the couple from a half-open door. Similar expressions of sexual intimacy in a refined setting appear on other silver vessels of the period, such as the male-female couples on two of the cups from the House of the Menander hoard. 39 The fact that such cups belonged to the drinking party suggests that both men and women were expected to comment on them, perhaps stressing the relative pleasures of sexual intercourse that Roman men enjoyed with both women and boys.

Figure 6. Male-male lovemaking, Warren Cup, side A, 15–30 ce , silver, height 15.2 cm. British Museum, 1999, 0426.1.

Whereas we can only hypothesize the use of vessels with sexual imagery in a banquet setting, the series of erotic pictures from the villa excavated under the Farnesina in Rome provides a specific ideological and viewing context. 40 Dated to around 20 bce , these pictures belong to the decorative scheme of three rooms conceived as picture galleries or pinacothecae , and as such underscore the fact that proper collections included works of the Archaic and Classical periods along with paintings showing the calculus veneris , that is, Kama-Sutra-like representations of the sexual positions (Ov. Tr . 2.521–528). Like the fine paintings of the Greek masters, the sexually explicit visual artworks were trophies of the owner’s good taste and sophistication, raising the suspicion that the sexual standards promoted by Augustus’s moral reform were ineffective. 41 Instead, the visual record from this period reflects positive social attitudes that cast sex with beautiful partners (of both sexes) as an essential pleasure.

Hypersexual Pompeii? The Later 1st Century

Given the plethora of objects and paintings with sexually explicit representations found in the sites buried by Vesuvius in 79 ce , it is remarkable how little scholarly attention these objects have received. From the viewpoint of curators, it was enough to put like with like, so that until recently a researcher was more likely to find a drawer full of phalli than to find information about where they were discovered. If Pompeii seems a hypersexual city, it is because so many more objects—in many more media—escaped destruction. It is likely that other cities around the ancient Mediterranean would have yielded a like number of such objects had they been covered by volcanic material.

In the region buried by Vesuvius, we see a steady production of images of male-female intercourse, particularly in well-preserved frescoes dating from about 30 ce to the eruption of 79. The handsomest of these include the paintings from the House of the Beautiful Impluvium and that of Caecilius Iucundus, presenting attractive pairs of lovers in richly appointed bedchambers. The painting from the house of Caecilius (Fig. 7 ), with its inclusion of a bedroom servant and gold leaf used to accent fabrics, is the closest in quality to the fine pinakes that decorated the walls of the villa under the Farnesina in Rome. But in all the Pompeian examples, these erotic pictures—properly relegated to the upper zones of the walls in the Farnesina—form the centerpieces of walls in the center zones. That owners prized such paintings suggests that they—as non-elite individuals—embraced the elite view that paintings of lovemaking belonged in a proper gentleman’s picture collection.

Figure 7. Pompeii, house of Caecilius Iucundus, north wall of peristyle l , between rooms o and p: male-female couple on bed, 62–79 ce , fresco 18 x 15 ½ in. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 11059.

As center pictures, these paintings could be combined with center pictures of other subjects within the room. In cubiculum 43 of the House of the Centenary at Pompeii, a painting of the drunken Hercules sleeping while cupids play with his weapons is the focal point of the rear wall, whereas paintings of intimate male-female lovemaking adorn the centers of the right and left walls. 42 Notable is the absence of bedroom servants in the paintings of lovemaking—an important marker of elite luxury included in the painting from the house of Caecilius Iucundus. Although the denotation “cubiculum” is a modern one, research has demonstrated that—particularly when it formed part of a suite including other rooms for dining and reception—it was meant for meeting special guests, for private conversations, for sleeping, and for sex. 43 Hercules sleeps while the two couples enjoy sexual intimacy.

Whereas it is possible to build a context for interpreting erotic wall paintings through analysis of their spatial context and the iconography of paintings that accompany them, in some cases the imagery itself provides clues to the owner’s sexual acculturation. A good example is a bronze mirror found in a tomb on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. 44 On an ornate bed a woman wearing her hair in the elaborate pushed-up curls of the Flavian period parts her legs to be penetrated by her male lover. Although the imagery is standard, the setting is unusually detailed, including the owner’s pet dog, a mouse drinking from a vessel, and a shuttered erotic pinax hanging above the bed. One is tempted to see the mirror as a special commission, with the artist instructed to represent the couple’s beauty along with the woman’s favorite things. The reverse is also unique, with a zodiac band framing the reflecting disk—perhaps a reminder of the fleeting nature of time and beauty.

In contrast to such custom-made sexual imagery are generic representations repeated in many paintings at Pompeii: they serve to “pretty up” the walls of spaces used for prostitution. The paintings decorating the Lupanar, Pompeii’s only purpose-made brothel, are of relatively high quality, presenting standard male-female couples in a variety of positions (Fig. 8 ). Placed above the doorways to the five cubicles—each with a masonry bed—arranged around the ground-floor corridor, they emphasize the male-female couples’ bodies with scant attention paid to textiles and furnishings. Sex in the Lupanar was likely a rough and ready affair, with a toss with a prostitute costing no more than a cup of ordinary wine (2 asses). The visual representations, in contrast, present relatively genteel couplings; in one painting the woman, fully clothed, stands by the bed to join her partner in contemplating an erotic pinax. 45 It is clear that such representations neither advertise the kind of sex that was for sale (the many graffiti mention male prostitutes for sale as well) nor the social standing of the customers: relatively poor, mostly non-elite clients.

Figure 8. Pompeii, the Grand Lupanar, view of interior from west, 62–79 ce .

Humorous Sexual Representations

Visual representations of sexual acts that were taboo within Roman culture contribute significantly to our knowledge of ancient sexual acculturation. Paramount among these are the eight paintings discovered in the dressing room of the Suburban Baths at Pompeii ( 62–79 ce ). 46 The images consist of small unframed vignettes placed above representations of numbered boxes on a shelf. Excavators found remains of real boxes and a wooden shelf just beneath the paintings where bathers placed their things; the sexual vignettes, then, constituted labels coupled with the numbered boxes. Since these images blatantly illustrate sexual acts that Roman viewers would have considered debased, they provide insight into attitudes toward acts that invective and legal texts condemn as immoral: fellatio, cunnilingus, woman-to-woman intercourse, threesomes, and foursomes.

Of the eight images, three get their humor by showing individuals sullying their mouths and thereby incurring the stigma of the os impurum . As the instrument of public speech, the os , meaning both “mouth” and “countenance,” was to be kept unpolluted by oral sex. 47 In one vignette it is a woman who suffers the os impurum by fellating a man who wears a toga and holds a rotulus in his left hand. In another representation that is unique in Greek and Roman art, a woman performs cunnilingus on another woman. The third vignette, also unique, shows a man eagerly performing cunnilingus on a woman (Fig. 9 ); when this act is depicted it is invariably a male-female couple engaged in mutual oral sex (“69”). 48

Figure 9. Pompeii, Suburban Baths, apodyterium 7, south wall, scene IV, a man performing cunnilingus on a woman.

The most unusual image, and one that reflects strong cultural biases against female-female sex, shows a standing woman who penetrates a woman lying on a bed. 49 In the framework of Roman law and invective, the standing woman must be playing the man’s role using a strapped-on dildo (Sen. Controv . 1.2.23: Juv. 6.306–313; Mart. 1.90; 7.67): she is a tribad , a sexual monstrosity. In terms of humor, this representation gets its comic effect from the reversal of proper sexual roles: the woman must always be penetrated but never the penetrator.

Men transgressing their proper sexual roles appear as well in the Suburban Baths. Because Romans constructed the citizen male’s proper sexual role as penetrator of the mouth, anus, or vagina of persons of inferior status (non-citizens, including slaves and foreigners), men who liked to be penetrated suffered the stigma of infamia . Such men, called cinaedi , were considered sexual monsters, even though there was a social acceptance that all men were bisexual. Sexual experimentation before marriage—with partners of both sexes—was to be expected, and an unmarried man’s sexual use of slaves and prostitutes constituted a sexual safety valve that kept elite virgins and married women safe (Hor. Sat . 1.2.31–32). 50

One image in the Suburban Baths features the cinaedus in the middle of a sexual threesome: a man penetrates him while he performs his proper male role by penetrating a kneeling woman. 51 This representation indexes the fear of Roman men that this sexual monster has the power to attract women; we find him often accused of adultery with married women. 52 Another painting represents a foursome where the cinaedus , penetrated by a man, is being fellated by a woman who, in turn, receives cunnilingus from another woman. 53 The vignettes of the Suburban Baths constitute a compendium of sexual acts proscribed in Roman culture, save the most defiling and humiliating act of all: irrumatio , or forced fellatio of a man by a man. 54 Cunnilingus runs a close second, however, since Romans believed that the woman was penetrating with her genitals the person performing cunnilingus on her—another unthinkable reversal of the proper female role in sex. Given the calculated overturning of sexual rules and roles in the eight surviving paintings of the Suburban Baths, it is clear that their intention is to incite laughter; several scholars have framed this laughter as an antidote against envious bathers who would cast the Evil Eye on the beautiful bodies of other bathers undressing in this space. 55

Sexual acrobatics constitute another kind of humor. Three paintings, preserved only in contemporary engravings, once appeared among scenes of tavern life on the walls of the Inn on the Street of Mercury at Pompeii; they must reflect the nude mime ( nudatio mimarum ), a popular feature of theatrical productions (Val. Max. 2.10.8; Mart. 1.1). The best-known of the paintings features a woman bending over to pour wine into a glass while a man penetrates her from the rear. 56

The Phallus as Apotropaion

Many of the visual representations from the cities buried by Vesuvius that offended excavators and resulted in their banishment to the Cabinet of Obscene Objects had apotropaic rather than sexual meanings for ancient viewers. They index the belief that display of the phallus was protective. In this the Romans followed the Greeks, who also attributed protective power to the phallus, whether by itself or attached to a human form. Monumental stone phalli line the sacred way at Delos, and we find stelae of Hermes, upright stone pillars figuring an erect phallus and topped with the god’s head, placed at crossroads. 57 The Romans elaborated this form to represent the generative power of the paterfamilias, substituting the head of the paterfamilias for that of Hermes. 58

At Pompeii one finds terracotta plaques with phalli, some of them winged, at crossroads and at the entrances to shops. Several large stone phalli have been excavated as well. One of these, found in 1880 (west wall of Regio IX, insula 5) is carved from tuff and painted red. Beneath it was a marble tablet with the words hanc ego cacavi . 59 A phallus accompanied by the inscription hic habitat felicitas was found over an oven in a Pompeian bakery; contrary to modern interpretations, the owner of the bakery was not alluding to the happiness of sexual arousal but rather the good luck that the apotropaic phallus would bring to his enterprise—perhaps ensuring that his bread would rise. 60

Romans believed that the phallus constituted a fascinum , a term derived from the word fas , meaning “favorable.” A number of bronze phalli that morph into animal and human parts were among the first finds at Herculaneum ( 1840 ). These phalli, found in domestic contexts, were suspended from chains. With bells in turn hanging from them, they became tintinnabula ; their purpose was to ward off evil spirits, and they index the Roman belief that the noise of the bells, combined the power of male fertility, would protect the person or area where the phalli hung. Related to the tintinnabula are the many amulets worn on the person. Made of coral or amber, they feature the phallus as well as the hand with the thumb clenched between the index and middle finger. 61

Protective Phallic Deities

The Romans developed several genres of sexualized deities, most with clear apotropaic purposes. Priapus, an agricultural deity from the Near East, appears in the Hellenistic period as the progeny of Aphrodite and Dionysus (Paus. 9.31.2), and shares apotropaic meaning with the stelae of Hermes. Like him, Priapus protects crossroads and gateways. Additionally he defends gardens from thieves and the entryways of houses. In the obscene and humorous poems collected in the Priapaea , the god threatens intruders with rape. 62 The sacral-idyllic landscape paintings that first appear around 30 bce show worshippers of Priapus at country shrines where they pray to the god for fertility. In sculpture and large-scale painting he is often represented lifting his tunic, laden with the fruits of the field, to reveal his enormous member. Artists also created humorous variations, like the figure of Priapus at the entrance to the House of the Vettii at Pompeii, where he weighs his phallus against a sack of coins. 63

The laughter that images of Priapus incited becomes an apotropaion against the Evil Eye. The ancient Romans believed—as do many people throughout the Mediterranean today—that someone who envied your beauty or possessions could focus the Evil Eye on you and either harm or kill you. 64 If the wrongdoer laughed, it became impossible to carry out the spell, making laughter an antidote to the Evil Eye. Roman artists invented several types of hyperphallic beings, “unbecoming” because of their atypical bodies, their huge members, and the obscene acts they perform—all to cause viewers to laugh.

At the foundation of the humor of Priapus and other representations of hyperphallic beings (including Mercury, satyrs, pygmies, and Aethiopes) is the belief that large penises were ugly and laughable—a construction that first surfaces in 5th-century bce Greece (Ari. Nub . 1009–1023). The phallus, often coupled in visual representation with the deformed bodies of the dwarf, hunchback, and pygmy, becomes a means to incite salubrious laughter. The mosaic from the entryway to the House of the Evil Eye at Antioch shows a hunchback adding his phallus to the host of weapons and creatures that attack a large Evil Eye—an apotropaic image to counter the effects of envy in this liminal space. 65

Although visual representations of the pygmy appear in the visual art of Greece, Roman artists elaborated pygmy imagery in the 1st century ce to include scenes of hunting and feasting on the Nile; in all of these the pygmy is sexually incontinent, having sex at picnics and on boats. 66 Such imagery appears above all in gardens and tombs at Pompeii, a tradition attested as well at Ostia Antica in the 2nd century . 67

New Sexual Representations in Rhone Valley Ceramics, 70–250 ce

New ceramic workshops supplanted those of Arretium (Arezzo) in the late 1st century to serve the army posted along the Rhone. These workshops produced decorated bowls, plates, and wine jugs at Lugdunum (Lyons); a portion of this production was exported throughout the empire. Ceramic artists both copied earlier models and invented new sexual imagery, much of it humorous. Ceramics with sexual subject matter formed a large part of Rhone Valley production, bested only by representations of animals and those bearing gladiatorial scenes or weapons. 68

Of particular interest for our understanding of the cultural construction of sexuality are the many applied medallions ( médaillons d’applique )—reliefs made in molds and applied to bulbous jugs and pots thrown on the potter’s wheel. These decorated pots—bearing as many as four different medallions—seem to have been popular gifts at the Saturnalia.

Many of the medallions with sexual subjects include short, humorous captions that either comment on the scene or put words into the couples’ mouths. 69 A medallion from Lyons features a man kneeling at the foot of the bed entreating his female partner to make love with the words BENE FUTUO, followed by the less clear phrase VOLVI ME (perhaps “I’m laying down my life for you”). 70 Another sexual joke appears in a medallion where the man holds a palm of victory while preparing to crown the woman with a wreath. He says TU SOLA NICA, implying that although he won the contest, she is the winner in bed. 71 A now-lost medallion found near Arles reverses gender roles: the woman has taken up the man’s arms, a sword and shield, even while assuming the mulier equitans (“woman riding”) position. 72 She brandishes the man’s weapons, becoming the “soldier” in the battle of sex; the caption reads ORTE SCUTUS EST (“Look out! That’s a shield.”). It seems that man, at least for the moment, has lost the battle, since the artist represents him with a limp penis. It is an image of psychological castration that would have had particular meaning if the owner was a man serving in the Roman army.

Another medallion presents a visual pun: the representation of a galloping four-horse chariot hanging above the bed comments on the woman’s position ( mulier equitans ). 73 This time the caption puts words in the woman’s mouth—praising her partner’s sexual performance: VA… VIDES QUAM BENE CHALAS. (“V… [first part of man’s name in the vocative]! See how well you open me up.”) Like several of the vignettes from the Suburban Baths at Pompeii, this image gets its comic punch through role reversal: she is a liberated woman who dominates the man sexually—on top in several senses.

Captions also comment on the act represented rather than indicating the protagonists’ speech. A good example is a well-preserved vase (Fig. 10 ) recently excavated near Lyons, showing a man steering a boat with a rudder held in his right hand while penetrating a woman’s full buttocks. 74 She turns to chuck his chin (as in Archaic and Classical art) to express her affection. 75 The words NAVIGIUM VENERIS (“sexual steersmanship,” or “on course for sex”) appear above the couple. The image constitutes a clever pun on the man steering or navigating in two senses: he steers the boat even while steering his penis.

Figure 10. Male-female couple on boat with caption NAVIGIUM VENERIS, second century ce , applied medallion on vase, terracotta, diam 16.5 cm, from Lyons. Lyons, Musée de la Civilization Gallo-romaine, inv. CEL 7645.

Sexual acrobats also abound in Roman France in this period. In a lamp from Arles, a woman executes a shoulder stand so that the man, standing on the bed, can penetrate her from above. 76 A cupid pushing on the man’s buttocks adds to his thrusts. Several compositions featuring women performing a sexual balancing act suggest, like the painting from the Inn on the Street of Mercury at Pompeii, that they are representations of the nudatio mimarum or other theatrical sex acts. In a medallion from Nîmes, a woman reclines on one man’s back while another parts her legs. 77 Complicating these acrobatics is the fact that the woman holds a lamp in her outstretched hand—any movement might spill the oil or the flame. It is a feat similar in its complication to that of the couple from Pompeii, where the woman is trying to perform the sexual act without spilling wine. Another witty lamp shows a woman riding a man while working out with hand weights; 78 like the man in the NAVIGIUM VENERIS image, she is multi-tasking.

Finally, Rhone Valley ceramics featuring women copulating with stallions and mules may reflect trained performers (both woman and beast). 79 If texts like Apuleius’s The Golden Ass are any gauge, ancient Romans speculated on the mechanics and psychological effects of human-quadruped copulation. In the ceramics the woman is acting out her insatiability (a trait male writers attributed to women whole-cloth) even while she breaks prohibitions against bestiality.

The 3rd Century and Later

Although accidents of preservation greatly reduce evidence for sexual representations in the 3rd century , a partially preserved composition of erotic paintings in a room of the House of the Painted Vaults at Ostia suggests that Romans still valued them. 80 The representations with the longest life are those on lamps, and they feature both male-male and male-female lovemaking. The latest of these date to the 6th century and come for the most part from tombs, including areas where burning olive oil was a luxury practice (Brittania, Germania, Upper Pannonia). Such lamps announced the Romanness of the deceased, as did the sexual imagery. Even at this late date, visual representations of sexual intercourse constituted a positive cultural value.

Whether their purpose was to depict the pleasures or the upsets accompanying the gifts of Venus, visual representations of sex were ubiquitous. Like the seemingly obscene phalli and hyperphallic creatures safeguarding individuals, sexual representations carried positive connotations, and they were embraced by Greek and Roman patrons and viewers of both sexes over the centuries. The value in studying such visual representation lies in their ability to distinguish ancient attitudes toward what we call sexuality, obscenity, and pornography from our own.

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• Hubbard, Thomas K. , ed. A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities . Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
• Johns, Catherine . Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome . Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
• Kampen, Natalie B. , ed. Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Kendrick, Walter M. The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
• Lear, Andrew , and Eva Cantarella . Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods . Florence: Taylor & Francis, 2009.
• Levi, Doro . “The Evil Eye and the Lucky Hunchback.” In Antioch-on-the-Orontes . Edited by Richard Stillwell , 220–232. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941.
• Masterson, Mark , Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz , and James Robson , eds. Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World . London: Taylor & Francis, 2015.
• Parker, Holt N. “Love’s Body Anatomized: The Ancient Erotic Handbooks and the Rhetoric of Sexuality.” In Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome . Edited by Amy Richlin , 90–107. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Parker, Holt N. “The Teratogenic Grid.” In Roman Sexualities . Edited by Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner , 47–65. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
• Pollini, John . “The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver.” Art Bulletin 81.1 (1999): 21–52.
• Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin , and Lisa Auanger . Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
• Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin , and Amy Richlin , eds. Feminist Theory and the Classics . New York: Routledge, 1993.
• Richlin, Amy . The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor . 2d edn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
• Skinner, Marilyn B. Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture . 2d edn. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
• Stewart, Andrew F. Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Vout, Caroline . Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Vout, Caroline . Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome . London: British Museum Press, 2012.
• Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality . 2d edn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

1. John Boswell , Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); and Amy Richlin , “Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law Against Love Between Men,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.4 (1993): 554–571.

2. Michel Foucault , The History of Sexuality , translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978).

3. Judith Butler : see especially Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999); Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004). Feminist study in classics: Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin , eds., Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York: Routledge, 1993); Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Lisa Auanger , eds., Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Marilyn B. Skinner , Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture (2d edn.; Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014); and Mark Masterson , Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz , and James Robson , eds., Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World (London: Taylor and Francis, 2015).

4. David Halperin , One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990).

5. Michele Arditi , Il fascino e l’amuleto contro del fascino presso gli antichi , 2d edn. ed. Renato De Falco (Capri: La Conchiglia, 1991 [1825]).

6. Louis Barré , Le musée secret , vol. 8 of Herculanum et Pompéi: Recueil général des peintures, bronzes, mosaïques, etc., découverts jusqu’à ce jour, et reproduits d’après le Antichità di Ercolano, Il Museo borbonico, et tous les ouvrages analogues, augmenté de sujets inédits gravés au trait sur cuivre; par H. Roux Ainé (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1839).

7. Walter M. Kendrick , The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

8. Karl Otfried Müller , Ancient Art and its Remains: or, Manual of the Archaeology of Art , ed. F. G. Welcker and trans. John Leitch (London: H. G. Bohn, 1852), 619.

9. Kendrick, Secret Museum , 10–18.

10. Other sexually explicit subjects include courtships and mythological abductions of mortal boys and women by gods and the sexual adventures of satyrs and maenads.

11. Still fundamental is Kenneth J. Dover , Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); for an overview of the current literature, see Daniel Odgen , “Homosexuality,” in A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Classical World , eds. Mark Golden and Peter Toohey (Oxford: Berg, 2011), 35–54.

12. Ernst Gombrich , “Light, Form and Texture in Fifteenth-Century Painting,” Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts 112 (1964): 826–849.

13. Jeffrey Henderson , “Greek Attitudes toward Sex,” in Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome , eds. Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger (New York: Scribner’s, 1988), vol. 2, 1249–1264.

14. See Dover, Greek Homosexuality , passim; but see also J. N. Davidson , “Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality: Penetration and the Truth of Sex,” Past and Present 170 (1997): 3–51.

15. Emily Vermeule , “Some Erotica in Boston,” Antike Kunst 12.1 (1969): 10, fig. 2 , pl. 5, 1–2.

16. Andrew F. Stewart , Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 11.

17. For a careful examination of these images, see Stewart, Art, Desire, and the Body , 162–171.

18. Peter von Blanckenhagen , “Puerilia,” in In Memoriam Otto Brendel: Essays in Archaeology and the Humanities , eds. Larissa Bonfonte and Helga von Heintze (Mainz: von Zabern, 1976), 37–41.

19. Hans Dragendorff and Carl Watzinger , Arretinische Reliefkeramik mit Beschreibung der Sammlung in Tübingen (Reutlingen: Gryphius, 1948), 98; and Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , 77, n. 35.

20. The Pedeius Painter, Prostitutes and Men at Drinking Party , late 6th century bce red-figure cup, Paris, Louvre, inv. G 13; Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 15.

21. François Lissarague , “The Sexual Life of Satyrs,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World , eds. David M. Halperin , John J. Winkler , and Froma I. Zeitlin , 53–81 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

22. Timothy McNiven , “The Unheroic Penis: Otherness Exposed,” Source 15.1 (1995): 10–16.

23. Marie-Louise Säflund , The East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia: A Reconstruction and Interpretation of Its Composition (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology; Gothenburg: Lund, 1970).

24. Véronique Dasen , Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece (Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 169–174.

25. Otto J. Brendel , “The Scope and Temperament of Erotic Art in the Greco-Roman World,” in Studies in Erotic Art , eds. Theodore Bowie and Cornelia V. Christenson (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 42–46.

26. Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 16.

27. Andrew F. Stewart , “Reflections,” in Sexuality in Ancient Art , ed. Natalie B. Kampen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 147–149.

28. Holt N. Parker , “Love’s Body Anatomized: The Ancient Erotic Handbooks and the Rhetoric of Sexuality,” in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome , ed. Amy Richlin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 90–107.

29. Vessels from Delos and Pergamon: Brendel, “Erotic Art,” 54–57.

30. Terracotta vessel fragment from Pergamon (late 2nd century bce ), formerly Berlin, Antikensammlung, inv. C.7630 (lost in World War II): Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , fig. 7 ; mold found at Sardis (late 2nd century bce ), inv. P79.6/T79.3:8426: Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , fig. 8 .

31. Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 62.

32. J. J. Pollitt , Art in the Hellenistic Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 147–149.

33. Some scholars identify this representation as the Hermaphroditus nobilis of Polykles mentioned by Pliny: Aileen Ajootian, “s.v. Hermaphroditos,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae ; Plin. HN 34.80.

34. Pompeii, unknown location, fresco of Satyr and Hermaphroditus, Naples Archaeological Museum inv. 27699: Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , fig. 13; Hermaphroditus struggling with satyr, marble statue from Rome (Roman copy of 2nd century bce original), Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, inv. 155: Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , fig. 14; Adrian Stähli , Die Verweigerung der Lüste: Erotische Gruppen in der antiken Plastik (Berlin: Reimer, 1999), passim; and Elizabeth Bartman , “Erotic Statuary in the Roman House,” in Cultural Messages in the Graeco-Roman W orld: Acta of the Babesch 80th Anniversary Workshop, Radboud University Nijmegen, September 8th 2006 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 57–65.

35. Clarke, Looking at Laughter , 179–184; and Katherine T. von Stackelberg , “Garden Hybrids: Hermaphrodite Images and Gendered Spaces in the Roman House,” Classical Antiquity 33 (2014): 395–426.

36. Perfume bottle, cameo glass, from Estepa, Spain, The George Ortiz Collection, Geneva; Clarke, Roman Sex , figs. 57, 58.

37. Repeated on the fragment of multicoloured cameo glass, London, British Museum, inv. GR 1956.3–1.5.

38. John Pollini , “The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver,” Art Bulletin 81.1 (1999): 21–52. Several scholars have disputed the authenticity of the Warren Cup; see Jen Grove , “E. P. Warren’s ‘Paederastic Evangel’,” in Ancient Rome and the Construction of Modern Homosexual Identities , ed. Jennifer Ingleheart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 226–227, n. 60–67, for the current state of the scholarship.

39. Amedeo Maiuri , La Casa del Menandro e il suo tesoro di argenteria (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1933), 1:321–330, figs. 126 and 126; 2: pls. 31–36; and Kenneth S. Painter , The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii: The Silver Treasure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001).

40. Primary publication, Irene Bragantini and Mariette de Vos , Le decorazioni della villa romana della Farnesina , Museo Nazionale Romano: Le pitture (Rome: De Luca, 1982); full discussion of erotic paintings in Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , 93–107, figs. 28–35; see also Clarke, Roman Sex , figs. 9–11.

41. Paul Zanker , Pompeii: Public and Private Life , trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

42. Clarke, Roman Sex , figs. 4–6 .

43. Andrew M. Riggsby , “‘Public’ and ‘Private’ in Roman Culture: The Case of the Cubiculum,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 10 (1997): 36–56.

44. Clarke, Roman Sex , figs. 18–19.

45. Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 35.

46. Luciana Jacobelli , Le pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1995).

47. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , 220–223, nn. 52–58; Mark Bradley , “Foul Bodies in Ancient Rome,” in Smell and the Ancient Senses , ed. Mark Bradley , 136–137. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

48. Pompeii, Suburban Baths, room 7, dressing room, Scene III, a woman performing fellatio on a man; Scene IV, a man performing cunnilingus on a woman; Scene VII, a woman performing cunnilingus on a woman: Clarke, Roman Sex , figs. 83, 84, 90 respectively.

49. Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, Scene V, two women making love: Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 87.

50. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , 196, nn.8–9.

51. Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 88.

52. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , 234, n.92.

53. Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 90.

54. Amy Richlin , “The Meaning of irrumare in Catullus and Martial,” Classical Philology 76 (1981): 40–46; and Werner A. Krenkel , “Fellatio and Irrumatio,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität Rostock 29 (1980): 77–78.

55. Clarke, Looking at Laughter , 194–196.

56. The engraver’s misunderstanding of the shadow lines beneath the couples’ feet caused him to cast them as “tightrope walkers.” Pompeii, Inn on the Street of Mercury, room b , hand-coloured engraving of destroyed painting: man and woman performing sexual acrobatics, 62–79 ce : Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 43.

57. Gérard Siebert, “s.v. Hermes,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae .

58. See the well-preserved herm of L. Caecilius Iucundus, found in the atrium of the eponymous house (Pompeii V, 1, 26), with bronze genitals and bronze portrait head; Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, inv. 110663.

59. Pompeii, region IX, alley between insulae 5 and 6, phallus in tufa with marble plaque, 1st century ce , Naples Archaeological Museum, the Pornographic Collection, inv. 113415: Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 65; the inscription translates “I shat this one out”: A. E. Housman , “Praefanda,” Hermes 66 (1931): 404.

60. Pompeii, VI, 6, 18, plaque with legend HIC HABITAT FELICITAS, painted terracotta, Naples Archaeological Museum, the Pornographic Collection, inv. 27741: Clarke, Looking at Laughter , 72–74, figs. 28–29.

61. Stefano De Caro , Il Gabinetto Segreto del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli: Guida alla collezione (Milan: Electa Napoli, 2000), 74–75, 80.

62. Carmina Priapea , 25, trans. Richlin, Garden of Priapus , 122.

63. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, entryway a/b, west wall, north part, Priapus weighing his member against a sack of gold: Clarke, Roman Sex , figs. 1–3 .

64. Some useful sources are Thomas Rakoczy , Böser Blick: Macht des Auges und Neid der Götter: Eine Untersuchungen zur Kraft des Blickes in der griechischen Literatur (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1996); Alan Dundes , ed., The Evil Eye: A Casebook (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981); Frederick Thomas Elworthy , The Evil Eye: An Account of This Ancient and Widespread Superstition (New York: Julian Press, 1958 [1895]); and Pierre Bettez Gravel , The Malevolent Eye: An Essay on the Evil Eye, Fertility and the Concept of Mana (American University Studies, Series 11, Anthropology and Sociology; New York: Peter Lang, 1995).

65. Doro Levi , “The Evil Eye and the Lucky Hunchback,” in Antioch-on-the-Orontes , ed. Richard Stillwell (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 225.

66. Isola Sacra, tomb 16, black-and-white mosaic, c. 150 ce ; John R. Clarke , Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.– ce 315 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), figs. 122–123.

67. Isola Sacra, tomb 16, black-and-white mosaic, c. 150 ce ; Clarke, Ordinary Romans , figs. 122–123.

68. Annalis Leibundgut , Die römischen Lampen in der Schweiz (Bern: Francke, 1977), 199; and Donald M. Bailey , Roman Lamps Made in Italy , vol. 2 of A Catalogue of Lamps in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1980), 64.

69. The only parallel for the artist putting words into the sexual protagonists’ mouths is a painting removed from a room of the tavern near the Forum at Pompeii (VII, 9, 33, 62–79 ce , Naples inv. 27690). This was a single room for a prostitute, a so-called cella meretricia . The woman, who has assumed the position for rear-entry sex, turns to her partner, kneeling behind her, to say “LENTE IMPELLE,” or “Thrust slowly”; Clarke, Roman Sex , 154–155, fig. 107; J. L. Butrica, “Review of John R. Clarke, Roman Sex ,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review .

70. Clarke, Looking at Laughter , 216, fig. 110, and n. 32.

71. Male-female couple on bed with caption TU SOLA NICA, 2nd century ce , fragment of applied medallion, terracotta, diam. 9.5 cm, Lyons, Musée del a civilisation gallo-romaine, inv. 2000.0.2567; Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 95.

72. Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 101.

73. Clarke, Roman Sex , fig. 106.

74. Sandrine Marquié , “Les médaillons d’applique rhodaniens de la Place des Célestins à Lyon,” Revue Archéologique de l’Est 50.172 (1999–2000): 268–270, figs. 16, 31; and Clarke, Roman Sex , 142–144, figs. 96 and 96-1.

75. Gerhard Neumann , Gesten und Gebärden in der griechischen Kunst (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), 67–69; and Leo Steinberg , The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 3.

76. Male-female lovemaking with Cupid, lamp, 2nd century ce , terracotta, diam. 9.8 cm, Musée d’Arles et de la Provence antique, inv. IRP 89.214.333; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , fig. 115.

77. Threesome of two men and a woman, 2nd to early 3rd century ce , applied medallion, terracotta, diam. 6 cm; Musée Archéologique, Nimes, inv. 90851.1106; Clarke, Looking at Laughter , fig. 118.

78. Male-female couple on bed, lamp, end of 1st century ce , diam. of disk, 9.8 cm; Musée d’Arles et de la Provence antique, inv. CIM.66.00.106; Clarke, Looking at Laughter , fig. 116.

79. Woman on bed with a small horse or pony, made in Athens by lampmaker Preimos, mid-3rd century ce , London, British Museum, inv. G&R 1971.4–26.39; Clarke, Looking at Laughter , 226, fig. 119; for further discussion, see Johns, Sex or Symbol , 110–111, fig. 90.

80. Ostia Antica, House of the Painted Vaults, room 5, west and south walls, 250 ce ; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking , 265–274, figs. 104–107.

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