Frontispiece Design for a Book of Love Poems

1700

Thanks to the tablet, held up by two women in the middle, we know that this title page must have been intended for a book of love poems by the Roman writers Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. Jan Goeree enjoyed working with classical motifs. Illustrations of a Faun (right foreground) and Bacchus (statue, upper middle) were right up his alley. He depicted the numerous figures in a beautiful, not unduly symmetrical arrangement.