Looking for Love in all the Right Places: Artistic Depictions of Love in the Roman de la Rose
by Emma Kennedy
by Emma Kennedy
Love has been depicted through literature and art for centuries. Medieval artistic depictions of love have often been passed over for the more thrilling depictions of love and desire of later centuries. Perhaps art historians find the later paintings of Europe to be more intriguing; maybe they enjoy having a richer, more complete history behind the art works; or perhaps most art historians share most of the world’s narrow-minded view that the people and artists of Medieval Europe just didn’t engage with that type of subject. I know that before taking this class, I was unaware of what the people of Medieval Europe thought love was. The people of Medieval Europe did engage in a type of love that can be considered to be very different from today’s idea of love, but no less important. Seen in troubadour poetry and stories from the period, “courtly love” was the highest form of romantic love. This idea of romantic love emerges with the Roman de la Rose. The Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) was a thirteenth-century story that helped bring about Medieval Europe’s idea of courtly love.
The Roman de la Rose is the story of the narrator, the Lover, who dreams about a beautiful, unattainable rose that is held captive in a castle. The rose is the perfect symbol for romantic love. And the idea that the rose is far away and out of the reach of the Lover shows how to the medieval people, love was this unattainable thing that existed in absence. Throughout the story there are allegorical characters who hinder or help the Lover’s quest for the rose. Characters like Courtesy, Youth, Idleness, Wealth and Fear. The Roman de la Rose tells a story of courtship, love and the Lover’s quest for ideal love, which represented as the unattainable rose.
The Roman de la Rose was a medieval best seller. It was hugely popular in its time and almost three hundred manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose survive to this day. The story was written in French by Guillaume de Lorris around the 1220s or 1230s, but he never finished it before he died and the remaining part of the story was finished by Jean de Meun forty years later.
The Harley Collection fifteenth-century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, which is held in the British Library, copied its text from a previous version of the story, but the illustrators chose to create their own images to go with the text and not rely on the illuminations of the manuscript the text was taken from. Images in illuminated manuscripts were placed within the text or sometimes before a portion of text to introduce the coming plot. These images were used to enhance the text. Even pages without large scale images would have some kind of illustration around the edges of the pages for decoration. For example, in the image below we see the page depicting the Garden of Pleasure, but beside the image of the Garden are foliage and birds around the edges of the page. This juxtaposition of imagery and text clearly shows how they work together to create an idea of the story.
The Garden of Pleasure is full of blooming flowers and trees hanging with ripe fruit--dates, peaches, and cherries. Animals roam the garden while beautiful men and women sit idly, listening to music and enjoying their leisure. These images are meant to evoke thoughts of fertility, new life, and love. We know that this garden is a place of leisure and pleasure, but it is also a distraction from the Lover’s quest. The allegory of Idleness leads the Lover into the garden and away from his search for the rose.
Harley 4425 f. 12v Garden of Pleasure
Description: The Lover and Dame Oiseuse (Idleness) about to enter the Garden of Pleasure; text and trompe l’oeil border of foliage and birds.
In this page of the manuscript, you can see that the images match the text of the story, both working together to relate Jean’s tale. The images highlight and draw attention to particular scenes and convey important ideas. The images were incredibly important and inform us about the culture of the time. Images can help fill in the blanks in the text if the text of the story were somehow damaged or physically decayed from time. The images give us a window into the medieval period. Not only can these images, not just of the Roman de la Rose, but other manuscripts as well, tell us about the idea of love and desire, but they also tell us about fashion at the time and about aristocratic life. The images, while often depicting fictional scenes, are based on what life was like in the time. They give us a glimpse into medieval life. The images together with the text tell us what love was thought to be then. Love was unattainable. Something that had to be searched for and only achieved through great struggle. Love also had nothing to do with marriage. Love is not connected with marriage for the medieval people. Love must exist in the absence of the other person.
This image of lovers in a paradise like garden is not exclusive to the Roman de la Rose. The imagery was seen in numerous other stories and illuminated manuscripts. These gardens always contain blooming flowers and trees with ripe fruit. There are also sealed off from the rest of the world. This romantic love exists outside the everyday. Which reinforces the medieval idea that love is this far off concept that is very rarely achieved. And it is certainly not achieved through marriage. Love must exist outside of marriage. To the medieval people is could not exists within marriage.
Harley 4425 f. 12v Garden of Pleasure
Description: Detail from the Garden of Pleasure. Men and women sitting together by a fountain singing and playing music.
In the above detail of the Garden of Pleasure, we see lords and ladies in the garden lounging and singing in the garden. Two women sing while their male companion plays the lute. Through the images in this illuminated manuscript, we also get a glimpse into the aristocratic life. This image also shows us how love was often conveyed through song or poetry and tied to leisure.
Harley 4425 f. 39 Castle of Jalousie
Description: Detail of a miniature of the Lover outside the Castle of Jalousie (Jealousy), where Bel Accueil (Fair Welcome) is imprisoned; Danger guards its gate.
Here we have the Castle of Jealousy where the rose the Lover seeks is being guarded. The Lover is seen in blue in the upper left hand corner while we the viewer are given a view of the castle’s defenses and who guards it. The man in the front of the castle staring directly out at the reader is the allegory of Danger, known as Dangier in Old French. Bel Accueil, Fair Welcome in English, another allegorical character in the story has also been imprisoned in the tower by Danger and Jealousy. It can be argued that by having Danger and Jealousy connected to the rose, which is a clear symbol for love, the authors and illuminators are saying something about the love. Perhaps that love is something dangerous and brings about jealousy and envy. And the very fact that the Castle is so heavily guarded shows again how love is this hard to achieve or attain. Eventually with the help of Venus (who represents in the story, carnal love), the Lover is able to obtain his rose and set Fair Welcome free.
The Garden of Pleasure and the Castle of Jealousy are two of the four main illuminations in this manuscript. There are many other smaller images scattered throughout the text like this one of Mars and Venus caught together in bed by Venus’s husband, Vulcan:
Harley 4425 f. 122v Vulcan, Venus and Mars
Description: Detail of a miniature of Vulcan discovering his wife, Venus, in bed with Mars. He has tied their feet together so they cannot escape.
This image is one of the many classical stories that are told within the Roman de la Rose. Others include Narcissus, the man from Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection and at the conclusion of the Roman de la Rose, the story deviates from its plot to tell the story of Pygmalion, the man who fell in love with the sculpture he made. So rather than just creating images of the Lover’s quest, the illuminators also painted the numerous “side” stories that are within the text. And in this image we see Venus and Mars in bed and they have been caught by Venus’s husband, Vulcan. Venus and Mars have been having an affair and Vulcan decided to catch them in the act. This scene of Vulcan catching his wife with another man is not unlike the scene in Marie de France’s lais, Equitan, where a man finds his wife in bed with her lover the king.
In another of Marie de France's lais, Laustic, a wife falls in love with her neighbor and her husband becomes suspicious of why she leaves their bed in the middle of the night. Eventually her husband asks her where she has been going and she replies that she has been listening to the nightingale sing. The husband has the nightingale shot and killed and then throws it into his wife's lap. The wife then wraps the dead bird in an expensive cloth and brings it to her secret lover. The lover then has the bird preserved and put in a decorated box. This box and more specifically the bird becomes a physical symbol of their love. Love is unattainable, but always desired. This gold encrusted box is a symbol of love in the medieval period, just like the rose is in the Roman de la Rose. The rose becomes something more than simply a rose: it becomes a placeholder for love, a love that must be searched for and is very hard to obtain.
In the literature and art of the medieval period, love becomes more than a feeling or a concept—it becomes tangible, something physical, and the idea that love can be physically represented goes hand in hand with the idea that, to the medieval people, love manifested itself physically. A person in love was physically affected by the sensation, which is an idea that remains, to a lesser degree, to this day. With the release of the Roman de la Rose and other stories and poems like it, this idea of love become hugely popular. Love had to be searched for and was always hard to find.
For more reading on the subject of art and love in the medieval period check out these books:
Michael Camille,The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire
Sabine Adler, Lovers in Art
Alison G. Stewart, Unequal lovers : a Study of Unequal Couples in Northern Art
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