Je m’occupais de vous La lettre amoureuse dans l’art occidental, de la Renaissance aux Lumières

Codified in literature and epistolary manuals of the sixteenth century, representations of the love letter in the arts were inspired principally by Ovid’s Héroïdes. The love letter subsequently received different treatment in Dutch genre painting. In France, its influence could be felt in the eighteenth century in the work of Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Marguerite Gérard. The “sentimental revolution” which followed valorised conjugal love and further modified representations of the love letter.