Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages

This catalog accompanies the exhibition Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages, on view at The Met Cloisters in New York from October 17, 2025 to March 29, 2026.

Through a bold and innovative lens, the exhibition reexamines medieval art and society, revealing how ideas of gender, sexuality, and desire were expressed and understood between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Featuring sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, and devotional objects, Spectrum of Desire uncovers the sensuality, ambiguity, and emotional depth often hidden beneath the surface of medieval imagery.

Richly illustrated with 93 color plates, this catalog includes essays by leading curators and scholars that explore themes such as the eroticism of Saint Sebastian, the complexity of courtly love, gender fluidity, and nonconformist sexual identities in medieval culture.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, the volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on how art reflected and shaped the spectrum of human desire in the Middle Ages.