Paintings

Echo was a forest nymph, an Oread (mountain nymph) who lived happily on Mount Helicon. She was a free spirit, very cheerful and playful, but her most notable talent, and what she loved most, was undoubtedly her voice. Her eloquence was such that, on Olympus, she became the main distraction for the goddess Hera herself.

Art is driven by ruptures. And if there is one name that embodies the radical break at the end of the 16th century, it is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Forget the idealized perfection of the Renaissance; with him, art looks directly at the street, the tavern, and raw humanity. His genius lies not only in technique but in his vision: he painted saints, apostles, and martyrs with the faces and bodies of common people, bathed in a dramatic light that would become his signature: tenebrism.

A young man, standing in a doorway, draws a young woman to steal a kiss from her... which she seems to have come looking for! The eroticism of stolen pleasure is the third party between two worlds. Two attitudes are expressed by the posture, the face of this young woman, divided between the attraction of forbidden fruit and respect for morality. “The Stolen Kiss” (Le Baiser à la dérobée) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard represents a frozen instant of furtive intimacy between two lovers.

The Belle Ferronière is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, painted in Milan between 1490 and 1499. The Belle (French for "the beautiful one") wears a ferronière, a narrow diadem with an attached jewel, which is worn centered on the forehead. The identity of La Belle is uncertain, but most art historians believe it is a portrait of the Milanese court lady Lucrezia Crivelli. The portrait is now housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris.