A highly acknowledged sculptor of his time, Miklós Ligeti often had to adapt himself to the expectations of his clients when it came to official commissions. By contrast, the works he made for pleasure were free from such restrictions and embodied his own intentions. Beside biblical and allegorical nude compositions, he delighted in portraying mythological creatures. Works with amorous subjects often feature yearning or teasing nymphs or fauns, serpentine, crawling figures.His work Love, which the Hungarian state purchased the year after it was made, is one of the most important examples in his art of the symbolic encounter of characters from different worlds. This two-figure marble composition shows a naked young man leaning over the nymph washed ashore, showering kisses on the fishtailed girl. Ligeti was interested in the representation of magical creatures in the first two decades of the 20th century; but with the themes and idiom of Symbolism and Art Nouveau generally fell out of favour, he too moved on in a different direction.
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