Love and the Maiden

Spencer Stanhope painted 'Love and the Maiden' in 1877 on a gold-leaf ground, one of his most explicitly medieval-influenced works and a piece that demonstrates the Aesthetic Movement's serious engagement with pre-Renaissance techniques. The use of gold leaf as a ground recalled Byzantine icon painting and the gold-ground altarpieces of Duccio and Cimabue — the art of a period before the development of perspectival illusionism that Victorian aesthetes found spiritually authentic in its uncompromised devotion to flat, luminous beauty. The subject of Love approaching or pursuing a young woman belongs to the long tradition of allegorical amorous subjects that runs from the Roman de la Rose through Botticelli and into Victorian painting. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco acquired this work, making it one of the more prominent Spencer Stanhopes in an American collection. The gold ground removes the scene entirely from the naturalistic world, placing it in the sacred or timeless space of medieval devotional art.

The gold leaf ground is the defining technical feature of the work, creating a luminous, non-naturalistic space that explicitly recalls medieval panel painting. Figures are painted against this ground in a manner that blends Pre-Raphaelite precision of drawing with the flat, decorative treatment appropriate to the gold-ground tradition. The overall effect is of devotional beauty rather than narrative drama.