This colored photograph by Fernand Khnopff, one of the key figures in Belgian Symbolism, summarizes some of the artist’s recurring obsessions: his relationship with photography and his fascination with his sister Marguerite, who served as a model and as the inspiration for many of the women he painted so frequently in his canvases.

Many of Khnopff’s works required great technical finesse, since he would photograph his favorite ones and color them later. Likewise, his choice of frames and the placement of his signature allowed these elements to become part of the work itself. Often mysterious, his portraits propose a game of concealment, in which nothing is what it seems. In this case, the artist presents a face that possesses both the qualities of a sphynx and of an angel, transporting the viewer to 19^th century Vienna and—of course—to the women portrayed by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.