Love at National Gallery

Love is one of the most inspiring of all the muses, and the exhibition entitled Love at National Gallery on show in 2008 depicts it in all its forms. From the power of divine love to the bitterness of unrequited or jealous love, all possible interpretations invite the viewer to contemplate the nature of this complex emotion.

Love at National Gallery looks at the whole spectrum of emotions involved in depicting love in art, with mortal love, chaste love, family and charitiable love sitting alongside religious devotion and celebrity worship. With artists including Vermeer, Raphael, Cranach, Holman Hunt and Marc Chagall, the exhibition examines the nature of romance and fidelity from the 15th century up to the present day.

Covering 500 years and a variety of styles and mediums, the exhibition on Love at National Gallery features plenty of different aspects of the ways in which we love, and demonstrates further the ways in which it has inspired countless artists across generations. But as Tracey Emin's Those Who Suffer Love (I'm OK Now) and Dante Gabrielle Rossetti's Astarte Syriaca illustrate, the emotions associated with love are not always positive.

The Singh Twins demonstrate another aspect of unrequited love with their examination of celebrity obsession, and Lord Frederic Leighton depicted two women who are both in love with the same man, and are therefore ruined by jealousy. Medea, by Anthony Frederick Sands is the ultimate portrayal of the negative consequences of love which result in death and deception.

But the Love exhibition at National Gallery is not all doom and gloom, there is much to be said for the uplifting power of a very positive emotion with Marc Quinn's Kiss, which shows a couple utterly lost in the moment of their embrace, and David Hockney's We Two Boys Together Clinging shows how love can conquer all, when faced with hostile surroundings.

With hundreds of appealing images and amazing depictions of what must surely be the most popular of all human emotions to be portrayed in the paintings and indeed any part of the art world, Love at National Gallery is an intriguing and surprising collection of works, that will inspire and provoke.

Love at National Gallery is on show until the 5th October 2008 and is free to enter.

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