The romantic holiday of Valentine’s Day may be named for a Roman, but many of Saint Valentine’s 3rd-century peers would have believed in deities that seemed to adore scheming against love.

Roman and Greek gods have long been a favorite topic of artists inspired by stories such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Although the Museum boasts many works of art celebrating the beauty and joy of love, the collections also include quite a few classically inspired paintings and sculptures highlighting tales of gods and goddesses behaving badly! Keep an eye out for these when you visit on Valentine’s Day (or, maybe more appropriately, Singles Awareness Day):

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Diana and Actaeon, c. 1600
Location: Beck Building, second floor

Acteon & Diana
While out hunting, mythic hero Acteon stumbles upon the Roman goddess Diana, surrounded by nymphs as she bathes. This painting captures the moment before Diana catches Actaeon spying, though you can see him in the distance in the far right. As punishment, she transforms him into a stag, and his hounds hunt him down.

   
French, Chenets (pair), c. 1710–40
Location: Rienzi

Venus & Vulcan
Though paired as these lovely gilt chenets, or fireplace supports for burning wood, Roman deities Vulcan and Venus weren’t exactly a match made in heaven. The husband-and-wife duo never had children, but that didn’t stop Venus from producing many sons and daughters through her affairs with various lovers, from fellow god Mars to the handsome but doomed mortal Adonis. After all, she is the goddess of love.

Angelica Kauffmann, Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus, 1774
Location: Rienzi

Ariadne & Theseus & Dionysus
Even though Ariadne betrays her father to save her love, the Greek hero Theseus, from the Minotaur’s labyrinth, Theseus abandons her on the island of Naxos—naturally, because of Athena, goddess of war, who warns Theseus to leave immediately. Theseus’s ship is far on the horizon in this dramatic painting. In some tellings of this myth, Ariadne later marries the god to whom the island belongs, Dionysus.

 
Francesco Solimena, The Royal Hunt of Dido and Aeneas, c. 1712–14
Location: Beck Building, second floor

Aeneas & Dido
This monumental painting features a scene from Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid, in which Aeneas, a Trojan prince, and Dido, queen of Carthage, are on a hunting trip when they’re caught in a sudden rainstorm: a scheme cooked up by Roman goddesses Juno and Venus. Aeneas and Dido seek shelter in a cave, where their love story begins—but it’s not meant to be. Ultimately, at the urging of gods Jupiter and Mercury, Aeneas deserts Dido to sail off to fulfill his destiny.

George Frederick Watts, Clytie, c. 1868
Location: Beck Building, second floor

Clytie & the Sun
The sun god abandons nymph Clytie, and in her grief, she sits perfectly still for nine days—doing nothing but gazing at her love, the sun, as he moves across the sky. As the petals at the base of this sculpture suggest, Clytie then turns into a sunflower. (Unrequited love aside, there are fascinating scientific reasons that young sunflowers track the sun!)

Are you intrigued by these star-crossed lovers in art? See which art couple you and your sweetheart are: Take our BuzzFeed quiz inspired by the Twilight Tour on February 14 at our beautiful house museum Rienzi.