Some of those ideas incorporated in the exhibition are the need for beauty, temptation as prohibition and transgression, and the parallels between the erotic and religious sacrifice. Having a global, pansexual character, the exhibition is covering the widest range of 
orientations and types of desire: the male and female gaze and the heterosexual and homosexual one, voyeurism and exhibitionism, bondage and sadomasochism, and the different varieties of fetishism.
All these differing aspects are to be found within the compendium of the myths of Eros, both those deriving from the Greco-Roman Olympus and those originating in the Bible. The exhibit illustrates the survival of these myths up to the present day and their transformation in the modern era, a process that has given them new, perverse meanings. Thus, the central section runs from Romanticism to Symbolism and from there to Surrealism and contemporary art, while also including flashbacks to the Renaissance and Baroque. Within each section there is an emphasis on the dialogue between the art of earlier centuries and contemporary creation.
The display focuses primarily on 19th-century European painting and sculpture, including works of Canova, Ingres, Delacroix, Millais, Moreau and Rodin, but also looks back to earlier periods, in particular the Baroque with Rubens and Bernini.
In addition it looks at later art, for example, the presence of 19th-century erotic themes in Surrealism and its wake. Figures and episodes derived from classical mythology and from the Judeo-Christian tradition make up this survey, which is organised into two principal sections: From Temptation to Sacrifice, which looks at the presence of death in erotic passion through themes such as the Birth of Venus, Eve and the Serpent, the Temptations of Saint Anthony, and the Kiss, and a second section entitled The Eternal Sleep, which analyses the subject of death and dying transformed into a trance similar to amorous ecstasy, present in themes such as Apollo and Hyacinth, Venus and Adonis, Mary
Magdalen and the skull, and the “beautiful suicide victims”, Cleopatra and Ophelia.
Through different periods and artistic media the visitor will see a number of symbolic motifs constantly reappearing, including tears, the wave and sea foam, hair, the serpent, cords for tying the flesh, etc, all of which define the image of the immortal but always changing figure of Eros.
Curator of the exhibition is Guillermo Solana, artistic director of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, and coordinator is Laura Andrada.