De liefde tussen peren en perziken en andere dingen

Towards the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century, the Ferrarese artist Benvenuto Tisi, better known as Il Garofalo, painted the ceiling of a small room in Palazzo Costabili in Ferrara. Focusing in particular on the Southwest corner of the ceiling, this article argues that the fresco in the so-called Sala del Tesoro should be read as an allegory of mutual love. The inclusion of references to all kinds of love, both spiritual and sensual and both traditional (heterosexual, familial, interconfessional) and transgressive (homosexual, pederastic and gynosodomic), without a clear hierarchy, indicate how the combined powers of Eros and Anteros generate a universal harmony.