LOVE AND OTHER INDOOR SPORTS

The show "Art and Love in Renaissance Italy", on view now at the Met in New York, aims to capture a sense of love using the trappings and objects of Renaissance domestic life--pottery, embroidery, tools, jewellery, prints and paintings. Many of the 160-or-so works have worth beyond their aesthetic appeal: despite being plain, mediocre or even folksy, they are important for their range, and for the stories they tell about the time in which they were relevant.

Do not come to be wowed by a single staggering work: there are few show-stoppers. (My viewing companion responded with decisive silence when asked how he liked the show.) But what is fascinating is the period's viscerally complex and irreconcilable attitude towards love and sex--its literal bedfellow, the elephant in the room.

Venus and Cupid

It's complicated business to reconcile these varied works. There's the chilled beauty of Fra Filippo Lippi's bridal portrait from around 1440, in which a man has entered the scene just barely, barely making contact with his lavish bride, their milky, serene faces an eternal mystery. But there is also the totally bizarre "Phallic Head Plate" (exactly how it sounds) along with pictures of Roman Gods and Godesses engaged in intimate acts. Especially strange is the 17th-century French print that depicts a parade leading a giant phallus shape.

These scenes make the final room feel a bit weird, pornographic and anachronistic. Yet the closing images of female adoration--the Titian of Venus reclining on sumptuous velvet in front of an organist or Lotto's cheeky Venus and Cupid still stand as canonical works of renaissance art--despite being shown alongside the commercialism of weddings and the perils of childbirth. It's a bit like the first time you learn all the bawdy jokes in "Romeo and Juliet": the bloom is off the rose (yet by this other name, it still smells somewhat sweet).

Despite being a carefully organised time-capsule, this show offers no coherent vision of love. In this way, it feels nicely, unnervingly authentic. What would be displayed in a show on the same topic, 500 years from now? A white, ploofy wedding dress? A Paris Hilton sex tape? A Valentine's Day card and Playboy magazine? We needn't feel wistful for what has been lost: our own cultural complications are just as odd. ~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI