The Lion in Love (fable)

[3] A century later, Francis Barlow's illustration of what he titles Leo Amatorius is summed up in the couplet "Love asailes with powerfull charmes, / and both our Prudence and our strength disarmes".

In illustrations during the following centuries, the lion fawns on his lady love in the same attitude as in Pisanello's medal, as for instance on the plate from the La Fontaine series of Keller & Guerin at the Luneville potteries.

The change in attitude is evident in Camille Roqueplan's painting of 1836 which makes the lion's love-object the one who clips its claws (see left), a detail absent from the text.

[12] Another treatment of the theme is the 1851 statue by Guillaume Geefs in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, although in this case the lady is sitting on the lion's back as she works with her scissors.

There were other sculptural treatments of the fable, including the statue by Hippolyte Maindron in the Parc de Blossac, Poitiers, erected in 1883, although the original plaster model was shown at the 1869 Salon.

[20] Smaller replicas of Geefs' statue were made for sale after it appeared at The Great Exhibition and the Exposition Universelle (1855),[21] and in 1885 Mintons issued a similar Parian ware figure of its own.

[31] Eugène Scribe's contemporary light-hearted comedy of 1840[32] is set in England, where a lord falls in love with his servant and, after attempting seduction and force, agrees to marry her.

[35] Later examples of the title's use in English include the play by Shelagh Delaney (1960), about the marriage between a frustrated man and an aggressive woman, and a romance by Elizabeth Lapthorne (2004).

[36] The method for pacifying the lion also gave rise in the 19th century to the allied English idioms of 'to draw someone's teeth'[37] and 'to cut, clip or pare someone's claws'.