Beauty, seduction, love and eroticism in a volume that explores the fascinating, mysterious realm of the relationship between art and eros.
[Art and eroticism] With 400 illustrations and the absorbing, well-documented but also enjoyable comments of two specialists, this volume explores a fascinating, secret territory: the relationship between art and eroticism.
Where does seduction begin? What triggers the spark of love? What transforms tender affection into overwhelming passion? Ever-timely questions to which literati, poets and musicians have attempted to offer replies across the centuries. But the force of images makes the figures of myth, the beating of the heart, the power of inner emotions more tangible still.
The book retraces the history of eroticism in art, from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present, passing through the amorous transports of the classical world, medieval modesty, Renaissance verve, Baroque torment, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the bourgeois blushing of the 1800s, the nonchalance of the 20th century.
This historical itinerary is followed by a section on interpretation of particular themes, symbols and meanings in erotic art.