Description
Romantic love as we know it today -- symbolized by hearts, roses, courting, chivalry, and more -- was invented in Europe in the Middle Ages. This thoroughly entertaining, sumptuously illustrated book explores the development of these ideas and shows how their depiction in paintings, tapestries, illuminations, and on luxurious objects taught Medieval men and women the art of love.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 even by religious objects of desire. The textiles, ivories, chests, jewels, and girdles, given as gifts and love-tokens, demonstrate that there was nothing chaste or sublimated about Medieval love, every aspect of which was depicted by artists and described by poets without inhibition.Spanning such well-known works as the Unicorn Tapestries to images of lute-playing troubadors and maidens in walled castles, this is a truly original look at the age-old subject of human desire.
