The top 10 romantic artworks
From the filthy to the romantic, art celebrating erotic pleasure has thrilled artists and collectors for centuries.
As Sotheby's plays host to the much-anticipated Erotic: Passion & Desire sale next week, we round up 10 of the best romantic artworks celebrating pleasure in the most sensual and provocative ways (leaving pornography aside, of course).
Just in time for Valentine's Day, this selection will make even the most liberal among you hot under the collar. Enjoy.
The blurring of eroticism and idealism in Rodin's The Kiss – on display at the British Museum this April – makes it one of the greatest images of carnal love to have ever been sculpted in marble.
The embracing couple are the adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, who were tragically slain by Francesca’s husband on discovering their illicit affair.
The couple, first depicted in Canto V of Dante’s 14th-century epic poem Inferno, fell in love after reading the blossoming romance of legendary lovers Lancelot and Guinevere.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Paolo and Francesca became popular subjects of adulterous love. Ary Scheffer's deeply erotic paintings depicting the ill-fated couple are some of the most deliciously sensual yet haunting works of the nineteenth century.
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