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.
Renowned among his twentieth-century Symbolist contemporaries as a master of colour, Spanish figurative painter Federico Beltran Masses is today known for his psychological portraits of seductive, powerful women.
Salome – referred to by one contemporary newspaper as 'the most daring nude picture ever painted' – is unflinching in its representation of the female form. On seeing John the Baptist's head presented on a silver platter, Salome – the daughter of Herod and Herodias – writhes in ecstasy under a dark star-lit sky.
While this is the most explicit of Beltran's femme fatale series, the rest of his daring oeuvre is unabashedly sensual, too. Thanks to the artist's seductive use of 'Beltran Blue', his fascination with eroticised Spanish majas, and his poetical references to Greek mythology, Federico Beltran Masses is one of the most intriguing artists of his time.
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