Frontispiece Design for a Book of Love Poems, Jan Goeree, c. 1700
Thanks to the tablet, held up by two women in the middle, we know that this title page must have been intended for a book of love poems by the Roman writers Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. Jan Goeree enjoyed working with classical motifs. Illustrations of a Faun (right foreground) and Bacchus (statue, upper middle) were right up his alley. He depicted the numerous figures in a beautiful, not unduly symmetrical arrangement.