Paintings

In the light of a mysterious glow, two figures emerge from the shadows in an intricate embrace. A pale, radiant woman leans toward a young man with golden curls, their lips barely centimeters apart, in a frozen moment that seems both fragile and immortal. Around them, in a disquieting display, enigmatic figures watch, hide and reveal, holding symbols that look like warnings and prophecies, such as Folly and Time.

Picasso never painted in the same way twice. Perhaps that is one of the best ways to approach him. Not as the man who invented a particular way of painting, nor as the artist who one day decided to break the rules forever, but as someone who seemed to have an almost permanent need to change the way he looked at the world.

Few paintings have been looked at, studied and reproduced as much as The Night Watch. Rembrandt finished it in 1642 and, almost four centuries later, it still holds secrets. Many of them were not in plain sight: they came to light thanks to Operation Night Watch, the research and restoration project the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam launched in 2019 with a team of more than twenty scientists, conservators, curators and photographers.

You've probably wondered what the two symbols that represent man and woman actually mean. Representing two planets, iron, copper and a pair of Olympian gods, the classic symbols for man and woman carry a lot of meaning in just a few lines.