The Lovers (Master of the Housebook)

The Lovers (German - Liebespaar) or The Gotha Lovers (Gothaer Liebespaar) is a c.1480 oil on panel painting attributed to the Master of the Housebook (drawing hand Ib). It is the first German large-format double portrait panel painting that does not depict a religious or liturgical scene. A painting with a similar composition and a corresponding text reference from Mainz is now lost but is preserved through a copy in the late 16th century family register of the Eisenberg family.

It has been in Gotha since at least 1854 and has hung in the Ducal Museum Gotha since its reopening in October 2013. After a 1997 restoration it was displayed at the Castle Museum in Friedenstein Palace and an exhibition in 1998 entitled "Jahreszeiten der Gefühle. Das Gothaer Liebespaar und die Minne im Spätmittelalter" ("Season of Emotions. The Gotha Lovers and Love in the Late Middle Ages") largely adopted art historian Daniel Hess' identification of the subjects as Philipp I, Count of Hanau-Münzenberg and Margarete Weißkirchner (with whom Phillipp lived after his wife Adriana's death) and his theory that it was commissioned on the occasion of his first pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1484-1485. Objections to that identification have recently been raised on historical grounds.