In a kiss painting, the meeting of two faces is the main event. It is a hard gesture to paint: the faces touch at close range, and the painter must decide how much of each the viewer sees.
These 12 works run from Giotto's Judas and Christ, around 1305, to Magritte's The Lovers of 1928, through love, myth, betrayal, tenderness and forbidden desire. In many of them, the kiss comes just before a parting, a discovery or a loss.
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How These Were Chosen
A picture earns its place here in one of two ways: the kiss is in the title, or the whole composition is built around it, with the two faces where the eye goes first. A couple embracing in a corner of a village fair passes neither test.
Every work can also be seen by the public, in a museum or in a chapel open to visitors. That rule leaves out the paintings still in private hands.
12. Franz von Stuck, The Kiss of the Sphinx (1895)
A naked man kneels with his head thrown back. Above him, out of deep shadow, rises the upper body of a sphinx, a monster from ancient myth with a human head and a lion's body, and she is the one giving the kiss.
The German painter Franz von Stuck made the picture in 1895, the year he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His students there later included Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
Three years earlier, Stuck had been one of the founders of the Munich Secession, a group of artists who broke away from the city's official art establishment to exhibit on their own terms.
The Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest sees in the scene the lethal embrace of a femme fatale. In French the words mean "fatal woman," the kind who leads men to their ruin.
Stuck painted her again and again. The museum also speaks of a brutal eroticism, and it points to the composition: the two bodies are crammed into a tight, narrow space.
In Greek myth, the Sphinx of Thebes killed every traveler who could not answer her riddle. Stuck stops the story at the kiss, and whatever she does to the man next stays outside the picture.
Bright red fills the upper left corner of the canvas, and the whole lower part sinks into black.
At a Glance
Artist: Franz von Stuck (1863 to 1928)
Painted: 1895
Medium: Oil on canvas
Where to see it: Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest (124.B)
About This Painting
How big is The Kiss of the Sphinx? The Kiss of the Sphinx measures 162.5 by 145.5 centimeters, about 64 by 57 inches.
Why does The Kiss of the Sphinx look so dark? The Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest says the raw colors of The Kiss of the Sphinx have darkened over time.
Where is The Kiss of the Sphinx held? The Kiss of the Sphinx belongs to the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, inventory number 124.B.
11. Agnolo Bronzino, An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (about 1545)
Cupid kisses Venus on the mouth, and Venus is his mother. Their two naked bodies fill the center of a panel crowded with other figures. While the boy leans in, one of her hands is busy with something else.