3-016-185 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Study for female figure in engraved illustration to Amor Mundi, (c1865). ‘Amor Mundi’ can be translated as ‘worldly love’ and the sensual pleasure that accompanies it. The poem begins with a pair of lovers at the top of a hill, floating in contentment. Then the mood turns sombre as they descend and are confronted by black clouds and ‘a scaled and hooded worm’. ‘Scaled’ evokes the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the ‘hooded’ image of Death awaits them.