The art of love

A new book by Nick Trend tells the story of art's greatest love affairs through the artists' most heartbreaking pictures

Rubens's most intimate portrait. Helena, Rubens's second wife, is cast, playfully, as Venus, the Goddess of Love. Rubens has posed her in homage to his great predecessor Titian, who made several paintings of women in fur – and in imitation of Venus Pudica. Derived from classical sculptures, it refers to Venus covering her nakedness. Yet, instead of hiding her breasts, Helena uses her arm to lift them into prominence, nipples erect. The moralising is clear in Steen's larger-scale paintings of chaotic, dysfunctional families, for which he is still famous. This is a classic example, full of chaos and jeopardy. In a topsy-turvy world, a child smokes a pipe, the dog eats the pie while the matriarch sleeps, and the baby throws his dish onto the floor. And the flirtatious woman…

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The Oldie (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025

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