Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Unequal Lovers: A Study Of Unequal Couples In Northern Art, Alison G. Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Love between the old and the young is a theme that has interested artists and audiences since antiquity, when Plautus (d. 184 B.C.), working after Greek originals, set down in writing the first representations of this theme that have come down to us.

The scope of this work is primarily the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a period in which conditions were such that the Unequal Lovers theme attained a new popularity and was first depicted as an independent representation in the visual arts. This popularity was most pronounced in northern Europe, especially Germany, and it is this greatest period …