The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire

Romantic love as we know it today was invented in the Middle Ages. Many ideas about love and the focus on the female as the object and the male as the subject of desire were developed by the poets and artists of the twelfth century onwards. Using a sumptuous array of well-known and less familiar images from the thirteenth century to the fifteenth, this book shows how images in paintings and on beautiful objects taught men and women about the art of love. The textiles, ivories, illuminations, che...