An Allegory of Love

Paolo Schiavo's An Allegory of Love, painted around 1440 and now at the Yale University Art Gallery, is a rare example of secular allegorical painting by a Florentine master better known for religious works. Paolo Schiavo was a follower of Masaccio and worked in Florence in the generation that absorbed the revolutionary new pictorial language of the great early Renaissance masters. Allegorical depictions of Love — typically showing Cupid or allegorical female figures representing different aspects of erotic or conjugal love — were produced for the domestic interiors of wealthy Florentine households, often as cassone panels or spalliere.

Tempera on panel. The allegorical figures are rendered in Schiavo's characteristic style — influenced by Masaccio's volumetric gravity but applied to a secular, decorative context. The composition has the horizontal, frieze-like quality typical of furniture painting.