From Anatomy To Romance : How The Heart Shape Found Its Way To Love

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How would you draw a heart? It's pretty simple you might say. Just start by sketching two circles side-by-side to form the top curves then draw a V shape below, connecting the outer edges of the circles to create the heart's point and outline the heart by connecting the top of each circle to the bottom of the V. You get yourself a heart right there. Well scientifically speaking, we do know that a heart looks nothing like that. As we send this symbol to the people we love expressing our feelings through text messages and chats, the question arises as to how did the heart make its way to being such a love symbol. Let's find out its backstory -

Ancient plant, Silphium - Silphium was a heart shaped ancient plant, a species of giant fennel grown on the North African coastline near the Greek city of Cyrene. This plant was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as a flavouring spice and a medicine especially for birth control. So apparently due to this it was connected to sex and love.

French Romance - In the 1250s the heart symbol seemingly showed up in the French romance called Romance de la Poire (Romance of the pear) but not many believe this to be the heart symbol as they doubt it was just an upside-down pear.

Medieval art, 1300s - In the early 1300s, medieval art began depicting heart-like shapes, notably seen in the work of Italian painter Giotto. In his painting in the Scrovegni Chapel, Giotto portrays charity offering a heart to Jesus, a powerful visual that helped cement the heart shape as a symbol for human emotions in art. This influential piece played a significant role in shaping how the heart would be used to represent love and sentiment in visual culture.

Galen and Aristotle ancient descriptions - Scholars like Pierre Vinken and Martin Kemp suggest that the heart symbol originates from ancient descriptions by Galen and Aristotle, who portrayed the human heart as having three chambers with a small central dent.

This theory proposes that the iconic heart shape emerged when artists and scientists in the Middle Ages attempted to visually interpret these classical medical texts. For instance, in the 14th century, Italian physician Guido da Vigevano created anatomical drawings of a heart resembling Aristotle's description.
In the 1400s and 1500s - Interestingly, until the late 1400s, the heart was typically depicted upside down. It wasn't until the early 1500s that the heart's orientation shifted in artwork, evolving into the familiar shape we recognize today, with the point at the bottom.

This heart symbol is now the perfect way to express our emotions. It is actually a metaphorical link to the human heart. Love is pretty complicated so is the real shape of the heart, the shape that we see on Valentine's day cards and as an emoji on our text messages is more simple as compared to the real lumpy shape we see in anatomy books. Can you actually think of people drawing the real complicated shape of the heart rather than this attractive heart symbol on love notes? Guess not.