Paintings

Some stories begin with a woman. Not with a war, a king, or a monster. With a woman. In Greek mythology, that woman was called Pandora. And her story is far stranger — and considerably darker — than the popular version of the curious young woman who opened a box and let all the evils of the world escape.

Some paintings are admired. Others are investigated. Francesco Hayez's The Kiss belongs to the first group. Hans Holbein the Younger's The Ambassadors, without a doubt, belongs to the second: it is likely the most studied, discussed, and analyzed work of the entire Northern Renaissance, and it still raises unresolved questions today.

A true icon of the Brera Art Gallery, Francesco Hayez's Kiss was once used on a well-known chocolate brand's boxes to celebrate Valentine's Day. Painted by Hayez at the age of seventy, the work stood out immediately for its sensual charge in an era that was still puritanical.

If you've ever walked through a museum and stopped in front of a medieval painting featuring a baby, you probably noticed something unsettling. That baby doesn't have chubby cheeks or an innocent gaze. It has the face of a fifty-year-old man after an exhausting workday: a receding hairline, deep forehead wrinkles, and an expression that seems to say he's tired of life.