Love, marriage and encounters

Gods, lovers, spouses and people whose relationships remain unknown.

Two figures together may suggest marriage, desire, fidelity, separation or a chance encounter. Commissions, literary subjects and the identities of sitters help establish their relationship. Without such evidence, it is easy to assign a story the artist never told.

We begin with Venus and ancient myths, then turn to family portraits, Persian and Indian poetry, and urban entertainment. Each section brings different conventions for depicting intimacy and different intended viewers.

Love in ancient myth

Gods offered painters established stories of desire, union and loss. Patrons chose them for their homes.

The Birth of Venus

Sandro Botticelli · c. 1485

Venus appears as a figure of ancient poetry, a starting point for European images of love.

Spring (Primavera)

Sandro Botticelli · About 1480

Venus, the Graces and the story of Chloris appear together. The theme of love joins several mythological episodes.

Venus and Cupid

Lorenzo Lotto · 1520s

Lotto connects Venus with marriage customs. Mythological imagery could convey wishes to a couple.

Mars and Venus United by Love

Paolo Veronese · 1570s

Veronese depicts the union of Mars and Venus. Joining the god of war to the goddess of love gives the subject a public dimension.

Venus and Adonis

Titian · 1550s

Titian’s Adonis leaves for the hunt. The story introduces separation and foreknowledge of the hero’s death.

Cupid and Psyche

Jacques Louis David · 1817

David returns to Cupid and Psyche in the nineteenth century. The ancient subject continues to change with patrons’ tastes.

Marriage and family portraits

Property, family standing and personal feeling meet within the same commissions. Information about sitters helps distinguish these purposes.

The Arnolfini Portrait

Jan van Eyck · 1434

Van Eyck’s double portrait was often read as a wedding. Modern scholarship leaves the circumstances of the encounter open.

Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement

Fra Filippo Lippi · ca. 1440

Lippi presents a couple through clothes, domestic space and inscriptions, linking the portrait to family standing.

Venus of Urbino

Titian · 1538

Titian’s Venus occupies a wealthy home. Servants and chests bring the ancient figure into the setting of contemporary marriage.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Marie Anne Lavoisier (Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758–1836)

Jacques Louis David · 1788

The Lavoisiers appear with scientific instruments. Their portrait presents a married couple and their shared intellectual life.

Young Husband: First Marketing

Lilly Martin Spencer · 1854

Spencer takes marriage into domestic comedy. A young husband is learning a household responsibility.

Encounters in poetry

Viewers of Iranian and Indian manuscript paintings often already knew the characters. Landscape, season and music helped identify the story.

Zal Climbing to Rudaba, page from a copy of the Shahnama of Firdausi

Unidentified Iranian painters · Safavid dynasty (1501–1722), dated 1580/90

Zal reaches Rudaba by climbing her hair. Their encounter belongs to a larger heroic epic.

The Lovers

Painting by Riza-yi 'Abbasi · dated 1039 AH/1630 CE

Reza Abbasi centres a single embracing couple. The independent sheet invites close viewing.

Royal lovers watching rain clouds: The month of Bhadon, from a Barahmasa

Unidentified Indian painters · c. 1790

Rain clouds belong to an Indian poetic tradition of longing and encounter. The season becomes part of the lovers’ subject.

Shiva and Parvati Playing Chaupar: Folio from a Rasamanjari Series

Devidasa of Nurpur · dated 1694–95

Shiva and Parvati’s game connects marital relations with religious narrative.

"Bahram Gur Sees a Herd of Deer Mesmerized by Dilaram' s Music", Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi

Attributed to Miskin · 1597–98

Dilaram’s music locates the scene within the literary story of Bahram Gur.

From theatre to personal encounter

European painters of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries place love in parks, theatres and leisure settings. Their models are often unidentified.

Mezzetin

Jean Antoine Watteau · ca. 1718–20

Mezzetin sings to an unseen listener. Feeling is presented through a character from Italian theatre.

Fête champêtre (Pastoral Gathering)

Jean Antoine Watteau, assisted by Jean-Baptiste Pater · 1718–21

Watteau and Pater gather elegantly dressed figures in a park, following the conventions of fêtes galantes.

The Love Song

Sir Edward Burne-Jones · 1868–77

Burne-Jones builds a love scene around a song. Its period and costumes belong to an imagined past.

In a Boat

Konstantin Korovin · 1888

Korovin places a reading man beside a woman. The title does not establish their relationship, so we begin with their shared activity.

The Pond

Victor Borisov-Musatov · 1902–1903

The identities of Borisov-Musatov’s models are known. His sister and fiancée take part in a scene he composed.

The Kiss (Lovers)

Gustav Klimt · 1908 (completed 1909)

Klimt turns an embrace into a large decorative image. The sources do not confirm the story of a particular couple.

What we know about these relationships

Intimacy had different conventions. A marriage picture could stress prosperity and descendants; a poetic scene, a familiar narrative; a portrait, particular people.

By the late nineteenth century, leisure scenes increasingly left relationships open. Titles and sitters’ biographies can narrow an interpretation, while gaps in the evidence also matter. A pose alone cannot recover someone’s private life.