The Heart in the Chest

Abstract

A small panel painting in Leipzig known as The Lovespell, attributed to a Rhenish master and dated to around 1480, has long puzzled art historians because of its enigmatic iconography and the eroticized presentation of a female nude at its center. Neither religious nor mythological in subject, the painting depicts a young woman striking sparks of fire and squeezing drops of water onto a plump red heart placed in an open chest, while a young man watches the scene through an open doorway. Most scholars have interpreted the image as the depiction of a magical love ritual, demonstrating the erotic power of women over men. Michael Camille famously described the male observer in the painting as embodying “the first pornographic gaze in Western art.” Drawing on contemporary literary and visual sources, this article proposes a different interpretation, arguing that the painting should be understood as an allegory of ideal love, possibly in the context of a marriage, as formulated in the traditions of German Minnesang and Meistersang.