There’s a good reason people say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Art has a particular way of getting to the heart of the human experience. 

For centuries, artists have used their craft to cut through the fluff of society and express their truest selves in imaginative and breathtaking ways. They’ve composed pieces that reveal feelings, emotions, and experiences central to everyone’s life. Art has explored the sorrow of the death of a loved one, the proud satisfaction of triumph, the burning humiliation of loss, the pure and unconditional love of a mother, and love in its many forms.

via GIPHY

With Valentine’s Day coming up soon, we thought it would be fun to explore how artists have expressed love, passion, desire, and lust through their art. So, today we’re going over a handful of our favorite pieces from history and basking in the rosy glow of this selection of romantic paintings.

Mars and Venus United by Love by Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese [Public Domain]

According to Greek myth, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was married to the god Hephaestus. Despite their union, she managed to get the attention of Ares, the god of war. The two fell passionately in love with one another, beginning an illicit affair that persisted until Hephaestus trapped them under an enchanted golden net to expose their infidelity before all of Olympus. 

Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese’s Mars and Venus United by Love portrays a meeting between the two Olympian lovers. In it, they share an intimate moment in the ruins of an abandoned hamlet, hidden by its crumbling remains. Venus (i.e., Aphrodite), adorned in pearls and wearing the enchanted girdle that her husband forged for her, welcoming her lover’s arrival. Below, two cherubs aid the lovers’ tryst, corralling Mars’s warhorse and playfully uniting the lovers with a length of silk ribbon.

Venus, Adonis, and Cupid by Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci [Public Domain]

First described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the story of Venus and Adonis is bittersweet.

Venus, while playing with her son Cupid, stabs herself with one of the god’s magical arrows, dooming herself to fall in love with the first person she sees. At the same moment, a beautiful young huntsman enters the clearing, stumbling across the divine duo. Upon seeing him, the goddess falls madly in love with the young man and abandons all of her other lovers, including Ares. Enraged by the sleight, Ares sends a wild boar to lure Adonis away and kill him. The beast runs the youth through and disappears into the forest, leaving the man to his demise. 

Baroque superstar Annibale Carracci takes a stab at this classic tale with this expressive and dramatic painting of Venus as she first lays eyes on her mortal lover. Delicately posed with her arms around her son, Venus’ entire body twists to catch sight of who’s come to spy on them. The young Cupid holds his magic arrow above his head, directing the viewer to spot the still-bleeding wound in his mother’s breast, a playful grin on his angelic features. Meanwhile, the lovers gaze longingly at each other, bewitched by the promise of their epic love story. 

The Bolt by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

 Jean-Honoré Fragonard [Public Domain]

Everyone has doubtlessly seen Fragonard’s famous painting, The Swing, but his painting titled The Bolt is so, so, so much sexier!

Frenzied hands search for purchase in the glistening, silken, pleats of his lover’s golden bodice and billowing skirts as this dashing Casanova pulls his sweetheart close for a tight embrace. His paramour throws her head back, swooning with the throes of passion and desire, sending her angelic curls tumbling over her shoulder. Clutching to her lover’s broad shoulders, she reaches for his other hand as they both strain on tiptoe, hastening him to arm the bolt and take her.

Cupid and Psyche in the Nuptial Bower by Hugh Douglas Hamilton

Hugh Douglas Hamilton [Public Domain]

The Neoclassical period of the 18th century is marked by its obsession for all things Greek and Roman. 

The story of Eros and Psyche, painted here by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, tells the trials of mortal princess Psyche as she tries to win back the love and trust of her divine lover, Eros. In Hamilton’s version, Eros and Psyche are reunited at last, brought together in their immortal forms. Taking refuge under the shade of a carefully placed canopy, the lovers draw near for a kiss, bodies bathed in a soft golden glow. Eros regards his beloved, utterly rapt in his adoration, while Psyche gazes eagerly at his lips, lost in her anticipation.

Afternoon in Naples by Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne [Public Domain}

A waiter draws the curtains on the remnants of a passionate tryst from the night before in Cézanne’s bawdy (and decidedly cheeky!) oil painting.

These two lovers share a post-coital cuddle as a waiter brings them tea, completely absorbed in one another as the day passes them by. Done in a classic Impressionist style, Cézanne’s brushwork is energetic and bursting with delicate glazes of unexpected color that hint at the beauty of what’s happened here.

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt [Public Domain]

Suffused in golden light, Klimt's world-renowned Art Nouveau masterpiece is the epitome of romantic and enduring love.

In it, two lovers share a modest but clearly impassioned embrace, their golden smocks, and very beings, intertwined. Around them, and woven throughout the woman's tresses, hundreds of violet wildflowers and forget-me-nots bloom in ecstasy, hinting at the painting's underlying meaning. Her lover, meanwhile, wears a wreath of ivy to symbolize his enduring love and devotion. 

Le Lit by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec [Public Domain]

Although he’s most famous for a series of energetic Post-Impressionist posters he created for the Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec also made a series of sketches and oil paintings that captured rare moments in Paris’s nightlife. 

The above oil on cardboard painting features two courtesans sharing a loving embrace as they rise with the sun. These two lovers hold one another close as they tangle in a sea of sheets, their bodies bathing in the early morning sunlight before they’re both forced to set off to work. 

Lautrec’s handling of these sapphic lovers is decidedly tender as he takes great pains to intimate, through color, composition, and line, the warmth of their stolen affections. His broken brushwork adds to the ephemerality of the piece, highlighting the fleeting nature of a love that’s so tender and benevolent but cannot last.

Frieda and Diego Rivera by Frida Kahlo

"P9160908dnrt" by pollobarca2 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The surrealists have long been defined by founder André Breton’s complicated relationship with women. Although his ethos is mirrored in other artists’ work (i.e., Man Ray, Picasso, etc.), there are plenty of female artists who worked in the same period and operated under the banner of surrealism. 

One such artist was the beloved Frida Kahlo. Kahlo is famous for her symbolically charged self-portraits and still life that celebrated her Mexican heritage. She is equally well known for her tumultuous relationship to fellow artist Diego Rivera, who was her husband from 1928 to 1939 (when they divorced) and also from late-1940 until her death in 1954.

The above portrait of the artist and Rivera was commissioned by mutual friend and art collector Albert Bender and painted early on into their first marriage. Frida double genders herself, simultaneously portraying herself as a loving and docile wife to the larger-than-life muralist Rivera while also asserting her ownership over the painting and art within.  

Love by TypeLike

Art today comes in as many diverse forms as it did in the past, manifesting as myth, story, abstraction, and symbolism to suit the artist’s needs. 

The above pop-art inspired canvas print is an everyday reminder to approach the world with love and kindness. The simple serif font and the pink color palette that the artist chose for the piece are as intrinsically tied to this simple graphic print as water for chocolate. This modern piece invokes all the great works of art that came before and asks the viewer to call to mind Fragonard’s fervent lovers, Hamilton’s chaste celestials, and even Toulouse-Lautrec’s sleepy couple. 

Whether you’re more inclined to the classical lovers of yore, or if modern compositions are more your style, we can guarantee there’s a piece of romantic art out there to get you going. 

Whatever your fancy, we hope we’ve inspired you to get in the mood for Valentine’s Day, or, at the very least, to broaden your horizons by exploring art just a little bit more.