How Art Captures Feelings of Love & Hate Through Art History

The painting shows Chagall and his then-wife-to-be Bella a few weeks before their marriage. The setting is ordinary. A bright living room holds everyday objects that are easily recognizable: a cake, cups, a money purse.

Chagall kisses Bella while floating over her. She holds a bouquet of flowers and seems to be just taking off. Chagall’s closed eyes, the saturated colors, and the dream-like portrayal of an ordinary day tell us how love should make us feel: Head over heels, floating in an unremarkable room, perhaps even holding some flowers.

A different yet equally powerful and intimate representation of love was attributed to the Netherlandish sculptor Claus de Werve (c. 1380-1439) with his Virgin and Child.

At first glance, the scene also appears ordinary, just a mother and her child reading together. Baby Jesus looks up towards Mary, while she protectively wraps her arm around him. It is primarily a depiction of parental love, but notes of love as faith can also be detected.

The theological theme—Jesus as God incarnate and Mary, the vessel that birthed him—is revealed by a Latin inscription on the bench taken from the Book of Ecclesiasticus “From the beginning, and before the word, was I created.”

ANGER

Anger can be born out of jealousy, the desire for revenge, envy, or injustice. One of the most fascinating examples of anger and its consequences is the Iliad, the famous ancient Greek epic poem, that begins with the word μῆνιν (menin), wrath. The anger belongs to Achilles, the greatest of all Greek warriors, who had been insulted and humiliated by Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. The king demanded the relinquishment of Achilles’s war prize, the slave Briseis, in order to take her for himself.

Giambattista Tiepolo’s The Rage of Achilles (1757) is a fresco located at Villa Valmarana ai Nani in Vicenza, Italy, that explores the effect of anger on the warrior. The scene depicts an enraged Achilles flinging himself towards Agamemnon. Achilles draws his sword, but the goddess of war and wisdom, Minerva, grabs him by his hair and holds him back. Achilles’ corrugated brows and contracted muscles suggest the coexistence of the anger towards his enemy and the surprise caused by Minerva’s actions.

Recently, portrayals of enraged women have been used to challenge the assumption that anger does not belong in the female world. Traditionally, artists have depicted irate women as monsters—for instance, Medusa or the Sphinx—a convention that contributed to the idea that angry women are ugly, hysterical, or simply ridiculous. The wrath and revenge of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1620) is arguably one of the best examples of the artist’s catharsis through anger.

An 1896 painting by Jean-Leon Gérôme depicts the allegory of Truth entitled, Truth Coming Out of Her Well. Truth is rendered as a naked, angry, and screaming woman who emerges from a well holding a whip in her hand, ready to chastise mankind. The anger is palpable and her nudity does not suggest lust, but power and strength. It is possibly inspired by the saying, “The naked truth.”

Once again art comes to our rescue. Whether we’re feeling enraged like Truth or in love like Chagall and Bella, we can take comfort in the fact that we have not been the first and we won’t be the last. Artists have always used their talents and portrayed these feelings. In turn, we can be inspired, moved, or confused. Alas! More feelings.