Of Lady Love and Her Pointy Arrows

The word Minne comes from Middle High German, an incarnation of the German language during the late, or high medieval period, roughly the Eleventh through the Fourteenth Centuries.  Minne literally meant "love", but its use corresponds most closely with our concept of courtly love.  Minnesang refers to courtly love poetry (lyric songs) as a whole, and Minnelied means the individual courtly love song.  There were Minnesängern, troubadours, or composers and singers of these courtly love songs.  The German-speaking world of the Middle Ages generated a body of courtly love poetry at least comparable to the famed troubadours of France and, well, I think they are cool.

I stumbled across an allegorical image of Frau Minne piercing the lover's heart with her arrow.  It is unclear to me whether the lover is a Minnesänger whom Frau Minne is inspiring with her shot, or whether her arrow will inflame him with love for some mortal woman or other.  Perhaps both.  At any rate, I loved the original image which is painted on the inside lid of a fourteenth-century oaken casket that now resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I stayed rather true to the original, save that I added considerably more detail to Frau Minne's dress, which seemed washed out to me.  I have not been able to find an online image of the original, but I did find a description of it from the Cloisters webpage at the Met here. 

I changed the ornamentation a tad from the original and added, arcing coyly over the pair, the opening line of the Minnelied, "Minne und Krone", attributed to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI.  In modern German it would read, "Ich grüße im Gesang die Süße," or "I greet with song the sweet one". 

For more paintings and crafts, visit The Celery Museum's Etsy page.