The Garden Of Love Is A Painting By Rubens, Produced In Around 1633 And Now In The Prado Museum In Madrid. Editorial Image

Much more healthily, he was the inventor of Rococo’s greatest subject, the fête galante, in which whispering couples glide mysteriously through parks and forests while an invisible clock counts down the moments of their love. Watteau may have been the master of the fête galante (The Pleasures of the Ball, c.1715-17, above), but Rubens was its originator. In the intimate and delightfully private pictures he painted of himself and his second wife, Hélène Fourment, strolling though the gardens of their house in Antwerp (The Garden of Love, c.1633, above), Rubens found a subject that was entirely new, but whose significance was universal: anyone who has ever been in love will recognise immediately these powerful yearnings and dreamy sighs. These days, of course, the French Rococo is viewed with considerable artistic suspicion.