The Liturgy of Love : Images from the "Song of Songs" in the Art of Cimabue, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt

The Liturgy of Love is an exploration of art reflecting the relationship between spiritual and physical love as expressed in the Old Testament "Song of Songs." Marilyn Lavin writes on the expression of love in Cimabue's late-13th-century fresco cycle of the Life of the Virgin in the apse of San Francesco in Assisi.

Her study provides the historical and theological setting for the fundamental role Cimabue's paintings played in the resurgence of naturalism at the dawn of the Renaissance.

Irving Lavin demonstrates how the "Song of Songs" invocation of love moulded not only the form of Michelangelo's sculpture but his concept for the design and meaning of the Medici mortuary chapel in the New Sacristy at San Lorenzo, Florence.

Together they look at how these same themes on love resonate in a radically different way in Rembrant's so-called Jewish Bride.