Wer kauft Liebesgotter?: Metastasen eines Motivs

Dietrich Gerhardt takes as his starting point Goethe’s poem Love Gods in the Market-place that was published in Voss’ Muses Almanach in 1796 and later became known under the title Who will buy Gods of Love?, to trace the modern transformations undergone in the pictorial arts, literature and music by the late antique motif of love gods. The study moves from Stabiae and Pompeii via Goethe andThorvaldsen through to Pushkin and ends with reflections on the turn of the millennium.