Caresses | Fernand Khnopff | 1896 Giovanni da Modena The room is furnished with

The room is furnished with a bed

and emotional depth

focusing instead on the human emotions of doubt

featuring soft

surrounded by concentric halos of gold

Caresses | Fernand Khnopff | 1896 Giovanni da Modena The room is furnished withAbout the artwork: In Caresses (1896), Fernand Khnopff presents a haunting, dreamlike encounter between a youthful, androgynous figure and a female sphinxhalf woman, half beast. Though their faces nearly touch, neither looks at the other, creating a charged silence filled with ambiguity and symbolic weight. The sphinxs gesture suggests intimacy, yet her feline body implies danger, evoking the archetype of the femme fatale so central to Symbolist art.