Art and Lovers
As we approach St. Valentine’s Day, it is nice to look at some sublime artistic expressions on the theme of love. There is so much to say about love: maternal love, filial love, spiritual love or romantic love. All of these forms of the heart’s chief concern are celebrated on this day.
When I think about art and love, I can’t help but think of the works of Manet. One work was about Monet. Manet painted Monet and his family, a family portrait of them relaxing in their garden.
This is the painting. I found the digital image on images.metmuseum.org.
Not only does Manet paint his friend and family in a warm way that shows the familial bonds between the woman, the child and the man, but he distinctly shows them affectionately coexisting. There is a depiction of harmony and peace which only love can bring.
One way that Manet establishes harmony in this painting is with his deft use of color to create a balance. The man’s shirt on the left matches the color of the boy’s outfit on the right which provides a stability. Then, the colors of the watering can and the woman’s dress connect. The gray is a shadow of the dress’s white. That ties those two sections together creating a balance between the left and right sides of the painting. Then, the chickens have a brownish red to them that match the color of the items on the trees. The chickens are on the bottom left quadrant of the painting while the tree’s fruits are on the top right quadrant. These create a satisfying balance also. All of these uses of color add to the harmony in the painting which alludes to familial peace.
Another painting that reminds me of love is the painting of the Madonna with Child and St. John the Baptist by Correggio. This is a soft depiction of a mother and her child. The divinity of her son is almost forgotten as the viewer contemplates the humanity of this beautiful child with his mother. The boy could be anyone’s little child. He is portrayed as smiling and lovable. The Blessed Mother Mary is gently looking at her son, and Correggio communicates this maternal love so perfectly.
Correggio creates a feeling of love and warmth in me because of the strong implied lines. My eye is caught in the eye lines between three figures. The Madonna is looking at the Christ Child who is looking at St. John. But, St. John is looking back at him, so the eyes go back and forth in that love, only here it is a positive love triangle. It is the love of family, of tenderness, of children and mothers.
This image can be downloaded for personal, non-commercial use from El Museo del Prado, España.
Gary said the La Pieta reminds him of love, the love between a mother and son. In this sculpture, as Mary holds her dead son in her arms, she suffers the cruelest pain. No mother would like to experience the torture of holding the body of her son in her arms like that. In this sculpture, the Blessed Mother looks down at her son’s broken body. Jesus’s blessed head hangs back behind his shoulders, lifeless. Mother Mary holds his spindly, emaciated corpse in the voluminous folds of her dress. Her lips are closed, but her eyes open. She looks on with a mixture of resignation and grief.
I downloaded this picture from romevacationtips.com. It can be shared for personal use.
There are many treatments of romantic love in art, but for me, the depictions of eroticism in art from the Renaissance are the most satisfying.
Titian did a painting of the God Bacchus meeting his fair love the Cretan Princess, Ariadne, for the first time. It was love at first sight. He immediately took her crown from her and threw it up in the air to create a heavenly constellation. This story is retold in the description of the painting from the National Gallery of London’s website.
This image is from Wikipedia and used with kindness for educational and personal purposes.
Gary thought about an American artist named Norman Rockwell when he thought about romantic love in art. He said that there was some denigration of Rockwell by some critics because he won mass approval and because he was financially profitable for his employer, The Saturday Evening Post, and for himself. However, he was immensely popular with the general public.
These are from The Saturday Evening Post’s archive.
Gary said that these images are “old-fashioned, sweet romance.” I guess that it’s the stuff that never goes out of style. The cover with the children has a detail, the dog stares at the viewer with such a humorous expression, as he has only a can of worms for company. Poor little guy!
Gary said that Rockwell tended to use a palette of warm colors which suggested nostalgia and appeal. He often took photos of friends and neighbors and props to use as reference points. Then he did charcoal drawings on the canvas before doing the underpainting. He worked primarily in oils. Everything that he did was geared toward achieving the expression of an ideal viewpoint that he wanted to convey to the viewers.
These paintings are just a few of the depictions of love that show artists’ views. All of us have a particular memory of someone whom we have loved. In this mind painting, we hold them still and always smiling. It is nice to be an artist to share those tender moments with others using a bit of canvas and some paint. Still, the heart holds its secrets, and sometimes a glance from a lover is special just because of the intimacy shared between the lovers, and their memory becomes a canvas for them alone.
Thanks for reading! Happy Valentine’s Day 💘.
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