Romeo and Juliet

Francesco Hayez painted Romeo and Juliet around 1823, depicting the climactic scene from Shakespeare's tragedy that had become one of the most popular subjects in European Romantic art. The dying lovers in the tomb — Romeo already dead when Juliet wakes, Juliet plunging his dagger into herself rather than survive him — gave Hayez the most dramatic scene from the Western tradition's most celebrated love story. His Italian audience understood the tragedy of the two young people destroyed by the arbitrary enmity of their families as an allegory of Italy's own fragmentation and the political hatreds that prevented its unification, giving the Shakespearean subject a specifically Risorgimento resonance.

The composition focuses on the intimate moment of the lovers' farewell, with warm flesh tones contrasting against the cool stone architecture. Hayez's Venetian training is evident in the rich, luminous coloring and the sensuous modeling of the figures.