The Kiss of the Sphinx

The Kiss of the Sphinx of 1895 addresses one of Stuck's most characteristic Symbolist subjects—the fatal encounter between masculine and feminine figured through mythology. The sphinx of Greek mythology, a female monster posing riddles and killing those who failed, represented the fatal feminine for the Symbolist imagination: beautiful, predatory, possessing knowledge that destroyed those who sought it. Stuck's version literalizes the lethal kiss—the moment of contact between the sphinx's inhuman body and the human male victim who receives it. The Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest holds this work, one of the major institutional records of Symbolist painting outside western Europe. The 1895 date places it in the most intense period of Symbolist visual culture, alongside similar works by Fernand Khnopff, Gustave Moreau, and Jan Toorop.

Oil on canvas with Stuck's theatrical lighting and precise academic technique in service of Symbolist subject matter. The sphinx figure combines a realistically rendered woman's head and torso with a lion body, requiring Stuck to manage an anatomically impossible figure with enough conviction to.