Jealousy in art

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Jealousy has long been a popular theme in art, used by writers, musicians, and visual artists to show its motives and effects.

In literature, writers explore jealousy with many devices and meanings:
- Scheherazade’s storytelling in One Thousand and One Nights begins with Scheherazade’s own jealous, dangerous situation.
- Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso shows jealousy driving a person to madness.
- Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale centers on Leontes’s jealousy about his wife.
- Hoffmann’s Princess Brambilla looks at jealousy and theatre, and how reality can feel like a mask.
- Charlotte Brontë’s Villette uses jealousy to challenge sexual stereotypes and the gaze of a jealous lover.
- Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right and Kept in the Dark examine double standards and the link between mind and body.
- Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata uses jealousy to probe hidden desires and sexuality.
- Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, especially the Albertine section, portrays jealousy as imprisonment, illness, and death.
- Michal Choromanski’s Jealousy and Medicine recreates the physical experience of jealousy.
- Freud’s ideas on jealousy influence Iris Murdoch’s A Word Child, where the subway becomes a symbol of endless repetition.
- Other novels look at how jealousy shapes the relationship between writer and reader, and between fiction and reality:
- Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy uses a window blind image to trap the reader in the jealous mind.
- Julian Barnes’s Talking It Over includes jealousy of the reader’s attention along with sexual jealousy.
- A. S. Byatt’s Possession analyzes how writing and reading can mute other voices.
- Isaac Disraeli also touches jealousy as a literary tool.

In art, faces and looks often reveal jealousy:
- Early drawings by Charles Le Brun and Sébastien Leclerc explore jealousy in the face.
- Bronzino’s An Allegory with Venus and Cupid includes a howling figure on the left to show jealousy.
- Albrecht Dürer’s Hercules’s Jealousy presents jealousy as a strong woman with a sword.
- Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Paolo and Francesca focuses on the jealous husband’s gaze as he watches the lovers’ kiss.
- Edvard Munch often places the husband at the front, suggesting jealousy comes more from the mind than from what is seen, using symbolic colors.
- Lighter moments exist too, like Gaston La Touche’s Jealousy or the Monkey, where a monkey interrupts a love scene.

Despite the sensational images jealousy can bring, it remains a rich source for creative ideas in both literature and painting. It also links to broader cultural patterns, such as Italian cities competing for prestige in the art world.