Les amours (in Latin Amores and in English The Loves) is the famous classical author Ovid’s first completed book of poetry, a first-person account of the poet’s love affair with Corinna, an unattainable higher class Roman girl. It was first published in 16BC in five books, but Ovid, by his own account, later edited it into the three-book edition that survives today. It is often subversive and humorous, sometimes exaggerating motifs and devices to the point of absurdity. Some literary scholars have called the Amores a major contribution to the Latin love elegy, but they are not generally considered among Ovid’s best works.

For this illustrated edition the well-known Paris publishing house Flammarion, who must have seen Goor’s illustrations for Amitiés particulières and appreciated his talent, asked the artist to produce nine plates, which cleverly combine the text’s rather mundane version of romantic love with lots of naked little male angels.