Seduction and Courtship
Flirtation, wooing and the rituals of love in art, from medieval castles of love to Dutch parlours, Edo prints and dance halls.
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Courtship has its rituals, and art has recorded them with humour, tenderness and a sharp eye for manoeuvre. Carved ivory mirror cases from 14th-century Paris show knights laying siege to a Castle of Love defended by ladies armed with roses. Johannes Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl (c. 1657) sets a soldier in a broad hat across a table from a smiling young woman, leaving the outcome open, while Suzuki Harunobu's woodblock prints of the 1760s show young Edo couples exchanging notes and glances.
William Hogarth took a darker view in Marriage A-la-Mode (c. 1743), a series that follows a mercenary match into infidelity and ruin. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Dance at Bougival (1883) catches a couple close in a summer crowd. The American sculptor Chris Antemann models porcelain figures of flirtatious dinner parties in the manner of 18th-century Meissen. Look for letters, fans, musical instruments and eyes that meet or look away.
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