‘Nothing lasts forever’ is a phrase that comes to mind when considering the selection of prints in the exhibition that capture moments when relationships become marred by a turn of events. The quintessential example is represented in Simone Cantarini’s famous etching Adam and Eve (1639), at the point when the pair make that regrettable decision to follow the advice of a demon serpent and take the forbidden fruit. However, Adam and Eve are not the only fictional couple depicted enjoying a last moment in a natural paradise before sin catches up with them. Both Pieter Tanje’s print of Venus & Adonis (1750) and Johann Rudolph Schellenberg’s small etching Death Catches two Lovers (1785) are variations of this moralising theme.

 Risky Relationships

Tales of love triangles also provide entertaining subject matter on which to base a work of art. The popularity of the love triangle encapsulated in Peter Paul Rubens’s painting Ixion, King of the Lapiths Deceived by Juno (c. 1615) led to its reproduction in an engraving by Pieter van Sompel. The content of Ruben’s image is unique, being the only depiction of Juno alongside her doubleganger (created by her husband Zeus). Ixion’s adulterous misadventure with Juno’s double resulted in his transformation into an infinitely spinning wheel of flame.

The combined experience of lust and rejection can give rise to feelings of embarrassment, despair, revenge and even aggression. This observation fuelled two engravings from the Emblemata Saecularia (1596) featured in the exhibition. One of the prints depicts a group of women in a violent brawl over a bachelor, who provokingly sieves through his choice of partner (strikingly similar to the contemporary reality TV series The Bachelor). The other depicts an older man's failure to seduce a young woman. Salt is added to the man’s wound as a cherub mockingly snaps his bow and love-dart in half in the background. This theme of humiliation is also echoed in Goya’s print Ya van desplumados [There they go plucked] (1796–99), where lustful men are plucked of their dignity and shooed away by young whores. While these moralising prints all warn of the downfalls of lust and temptation, the imagery is also highly entertaining in a secular sense.

(Ali Bezer, Aug. 2019}