The Portrait of the Lover

There are a surprising number of stories from antiquity about people who fall in love with statues or paintings, and about lovers who use such visual representations as substitutes for an absent beloved. In a charmingly conversational, witty meditation on this literary theme, Maurizio Bettini moves into a wide-ranging consideration of the relationship between self and image, the nature of love in the ancient world, the role of representation in culture, and more. Drawing on historical event...