Between 2000 and 2004 Nicoletta worked on a series of paintings called Amantes (Lovers), a semi-autobiographical sequence illustrating a passionate, sensual liaison set against an Italianate background. Worked in rich colours, the lovers’ closed eyes and tight embraces suggest a world in which only the relationship exists, to the exclusion of everything else.

In 2012 the publisher Legua Editorial assembled a collection of Nicoletta’s paintings and put them together with love poetry from writers including Shakespeare and Byron, Baudelaire and Maupassant, Rebolledo and Silva, in a large-format volume called Amantes. Published in their Art & Words series, it is a fitting collaboration and setting for Nicoletta’s most sensual paintings.