The Kiss Francesco Hayez (1791-1881)

Description of Francesco Hayes’ painting "The Kiss"

Hayes, a native of France, was raised not by his own mother but by his own aunt. Since his adolescence, he gravitated toward drawing. This prompted his uncle to send the young Francesco to be apprenticed to a restorer. After some time he became an apprentice to Francesco Maggiotto. In the position of apprentice he spent three years.

The painting "The Kiss" was created in 1859. The genre of performance is Italian Romanticism. The painter wrote three additional copies of this painting. Two of them are now in private collections. The third copy (a young girl depicted in an off-white dress) was painted for the Mulius family in 1861. It was sold at auction by Sotby`s in the United Kingdom in 2008.

The author considered this picture the most important of all his paintings. It managed to combine romanticism, naturalism, which is inherent in the Italian region of that time, to draw attention to love. The couple depicted in the painting represent Romeo and Juliet. Francesco Hayes tried to show how the Italian nation is reborn, to unite in the painting the love for the homeland and for man.

There are elements of symbolism in the painting. Looking at the clothes we can immediately identify the era - it is the Middle Ages. However, the iconography of the painting tells us that it is painted in the modern world. The colors used by the painter hint transparently at the Pact of Plombières (Italy-France), known for the birth of the Italian nation.