The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Cloisters is hosting a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the complex relationship between love, sex, and gender in medieval Europe. "Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages," curated by Melanie Holcomb and Nancy Thebaut, runs through March 29, 2026, at the unique museum located at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive in Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan.
The exhibition, housed in the dimly lit Gallery 2, presents an extraordinary collection of medieval manuscripts featuring vivid and sensual illuminations alongside figurative wood sculptures and objects made of metal, textile, and ivory decorated with erotic scenes. Visitors can examine writing tablets, rings, goblets, purses, saddles, and multiple locking chests that reveal the intimate side of medieval life. The curators explain that for the medieval heart, there was no defense against "desiderium," the Latin word for desire, which appeared in local languages as "dezire," "desir," "desyr," or "begern."
The most striking piece in the exhibition is an illumination depicting Christ's side wound as an independent, disembodied shape. Created by Jean le Noir and his workshop for "The Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, Duchess of Normandy" before 1349, this manuscript was likely designed for a young Bohemian princess. The image shows black slashes through a long, red pointed oval known as "vesica piscis" or fish bladder, surrounded by instruments of Christ's torture and death.
As curators Holcomb and Thebaut note in their exhibition catalog, this painting may shock modern viewers because "its orientation, colors, and shape strongly suggest a vulva." The artwork resembles both the Eye of Sauron and a naturalistic muscle tear, with the curators suggesting that the "peeking void tempts the eye to penetrate it and discover the blended meanings of blood, sex, suffering, and piety." Exhibition notes explain that many medieval thinkers viewed Christ as a mother to humanity, with examples like Julian of Norwich writing that Jesus breastfeeds humanity with the blood of his side wound.
The exhibition reveals how feminine symbols carried strong theological meanings for medieval artists, despite existing within a largely anti-feminist culture. Scholar Carolyn Dinshaw observed in her 2007 essay "Medieval Feminist Criticism" that people frequently engaged in feminist cultural acts. For instance, when English mystic Richard Rolle began associating exclusively with women, he switched his writing language from Latin to vernacular so his female followers could understand him. Similarly, Geoffrey Chaucer created a female character in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue" who destroys her husband's misogynist book and strikes him.
One of the first objects greeting visitors is an ornate belt adorned with red thread and silver medallions, suspended in air around invisible loins. The surfaces depict popular medieval stories about sex, including tales of Pyramus and Thisbe, Narcissus, and Saint Jerome in women's dress. A particularly famous story featured is that of Aristotle and Phyllis from 13th-century French lais and the English works of John Gower. In this tale, the great philosopher tutored young Alexander the Great, advising him not to associate with his father's mistress, Phyllis. However, Phyllis had already charmed Aristotle, agreeing to his advances only if he allowed her to dominate him. She then arranged for Alexander to witness her riding the great Aristotle on all fours like a horse.
English poetic versions of this episode create wordplay between the body's "Silogime" (syllogism) and the mind's "logique" (logic). The pair appears in the exhibition as a metal alloy sculpture over twelve inches high, with Aristotle gently bent at the waist, his mortification teaching the story's moral. This piece demonstrates the same emotional curve found in a French limestone Madonna statuette, Saint Sebastian flexing his knee, and Christ consoling John the Evangelist, whose carved wooden head rests on his savior's shoulder.
The Cloisters itself has a fascinating origin story connected to private collector George Grey Barnard, who spent much of the early 20th century bicycling through the French countryside searching for medieval antiques. According to J.L. Schrader's 1979 article in the Metropolitan's Bulletin magazine, Barnard occasionally hired rabbit catchers to scan their territories, paying "a franc for a statue with pointed shoes and a half franc for one with blunt-toed shoes, the latter being of the sixteenth century and therefore less valuable."
Barnard accumulated entire chunks of churches alongside remarkable objects like the burial topper of Jean d'Alluye, which he discovered face down, being used as a bridge across a small stream. Gallery 2 also features one of his most famous finds: a truncated figure of Christ carved from poplar in 12th-century French Romanesque style. The piece was first encountered cut off at the elbows, knees, and neck, being used by a farmer as a scarecrow. After liberation from later layers of gesso and gilding, a carved body in a loincloth emerged that leans at the hips with limbs turned inward and an impossibly tender torso.
The exhibition raises profound questions about sexuality and desire across different historical periods. Young people often discover that their sexuality has been shaped by forces that previously seemed unrelated, such as economics. Under the global structure of capitalism, libidinal forces govern the movement of money and power, making gender, desire, and value interconnected through what could be called sexual capitalism.
Since the Middle Ages existed before capitalism, which forms the axis of contemporary sexuality, contemplating medieval expressions of desire offers a unique perspective. In the simplest and most radical sense, these medieval artworks prove that desire exists beyond, behind, before, and after money as we know it. They demonstrate that regardless of historical period, sexuality functions as a mental process where memories of money, God, politics, and touch intertwine "lightly and inexorably."
The exhibition ultimately suggests that there is no defense against desire, which continually disrupts our sense of control over ourselves, including our understanding of economics and its effects on our physical responses. The tilted ribs over pelvises, hands comforting each other in sculpted wood, carefully positioned elbows, and the crimson slash in Christ's wound all serve to release viewers from conventional constraints, offering a window into the timeless nature of human desire and spiritual longing.
