The Kiss

This is a sculpture depicting a couple kissing. The sculpture is inspired by an episode in The Divine Comedy, the influential epic poem by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Lost in a moment of reckless passion, Paolo and Francesca are about to be discovered and killed by Francesca's husband, Paolo's brother. Rodin's sculpture soon shed its literary reference to become a universal image of a kiss. The two figures melt into one another - anonymous and passionate. Their bodies express their irresistible mutual attraction. The privacy of the moment, the nakedness of the moment, the nakedness of their desire and their disregard for the danger of being found out, cast us in the role of voyeur,