The "wounded heart" indicating love sickness came to be depicted as a heart symbol pierced with an arrow Cupid 's , or heart symbol "broken" in two or more pieces. The combination of the "heart shape" and its use within the "heart" metaphor developed at the end of the Middle Ages. With possible early examples or direct predecessors in the 13th to 14th century, the familiar symbol of the heart representing love developed in the 15th century, and became widely popular in the 16th. Before the 14th century, the "heart shape" was not associated with the meaning of the "heart" metaphor. The geometric shape itself is found in much earlier sources, but in such instances does not depict a "heart", but typically foliage: in examples from antiquity fig leaves, and in medieval iconography and heraldry typically the leaves of ivy and of the water-lily.