Grace Patterson, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies

Does Love really conquer all? The representation of passion from Virgil to Caravaggio

The universal theme of love and its all-consuming nature has gripped societies across the millennia. Its eternal hold over us means that the tropes and images used to describe it in the ancient world are still ubiquitous in our modern day films and popular music. But with this obsession has always come a fear, at least on the part of some, that dangerous and uncontrollable consequences may flow from passion unrestrained.

Focussing on the poetry of Ancient Rome through to the artwork of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods, this presentation will explore how love has been represented throughout the ages and what these representations reveals about us, our societies and our histories.

From Virgil’s dramatic epic ‘The Aeneid’ to Caravaggio’s erotic painting ‘Amor Vincit Omnia’, poets and artists have deployed the figure of Cupid as a warning of the power of love. Unlike other Gods from the ancient world, Cupid’s presence is still with us today, as many modern ‘Rom-Coms’ will attest. But his longevity and representation as the winged cherubic boy with whom we are familiar disguises his darker, more ominous origins.

But have the warnings of some of the greatest poets and artists in our history, that desire should be restrained in favour of more rational relationships, served their purpose, or have they in fact left us all the more in Love’s unrelenting thrall? And does this mean, therefore, that Love really does conquer all?

BA Classical Literature & Italian, Final Year
I am a 4th year Classical Literature and Italian student at Leeds. I am fascinated by the ancient world and its resonance in our own and am passionate about different cultures and how learning languages allows us to explore them. Last year I attended the University of Bologna, the oldest in the western world, where I studied Art History. My interest was sparked particularly by artworks which have as their subject classical stories. I soon found myself, when I wasn’t eating gelato, exploring galleries all over Italy - an experience that inspired my topic for this UGRE presentation.