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The Medieval Art of Love : Objects and Subjects of Desire by Ingo Hessel; George Swinton is a history book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Medieval Art of Love : Objects and Subjects of Desire about?

Romantic love as we know it today was invented in the Middle Ages. Many ideas about love and the focus upon the female as the object and the male as the subject of desire were developed by poets and artists from the twelfth century onwards. This book shows how images in paintings and on beautiful objects taught men and women the 'art' of love. The textiles, ivories, manuscript illuminations, chests, jewels and girdles do not reflect medieval life so much as help construct its most profound moments. Given as gifts and love-tokens, these objects were intimately connected with the bodies of their owners. Using a sumptuous array of well-known and less familiar images from the thirteenth century to the late fifteenth, Michael Camille explores the symbolic and social settings of love, the myths and paradoxes of love as an elite social code, and the erotic feelings sometimes aroused by religious objects of desire such as the Virgin Mary. There was nothing chaste or sublimated about many aspects of medieval love, which moved through various stages of looking, talking, touching and kissing culminating in the sexual possession of the beloved, an act often depicted by medieval artists without

Who reads The Medieval Art of Love : Objects and Subjects of Desire?

Author

Ingo Hessel; George Swinton

Publisher

Harry N Abrams B.V.

Published

1998

Language

EN

ISBN

9780810915442

Category

history

Subjects

Art, Fiction, History

Rating

4.11 / 5 (27 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14