It is the quintessential symbol of love. The heart is the only symbol that captures the meaning of love and is accepted by all cultures, although its representation does not match the actual shape of the heart. The universally known symbol is schematic and without details. Its origin is not clear but it has been accepted throughout the centuries despite being wrong. Where does it come from?
The first representations of the heart that have been discovered – in sculptures dated around 3000 BC – are not related to love, according to studies. To symbolize the central organ of the person, the ancestors would have tried to make the heart resemble an ivy leaf, in a similar way.
In Greek culture there was a symbol similar to the heart, which could be associated with it, although, as has been shown, it has nothing to do with it. In a Greek coin found, the silphium, an extinct plant and used for the control of maternity, was represented. The plant and its seed were stamped and was similar to a heart.
In the fifteenth century is when the heart is represented for the first time in the way in which it is known today with a loving meaning in a metaphorical sense. It is in an engraving called Romance of the pear: a person kneeling before the queen gives her a heart, which is shaped like a coniferous pineapple.
In 1673 Santa Margarita María de Alacoque established the definitive shape of the heart that, with variations, has survived to this day. She represented for the first time the Catholic icon of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with a shape similar to the current one: two rounded hemispheres of the same size.
Later, in the 16th century, it became popular thanks to the French deck of cards, which included hearts between clubs, spades and rhombuses, and whose symbol was the one we know today.
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