3-098-930 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Death of Alfonso XII (The Last Kiss), 1887. Alternative title: Last moments of King Alfonso XII. At the foot of the simple bed where the body of the ill-fated monarch lies are his confessor, Cardinal Benavides, and the Duke of Montpensier, among other figures barely distinguishable in the dim light of the room. Beside the head of the bed stands his widow, Queen Maria Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine, Alfonso XII's second wife, dressed in mourning and wiping away her tears with a handkerchief. Next to her is her eldest daughter, the Infanta Maria de las Mercedes, and on the other side, the young Infanta Maria Teresa, who sits up at the deathbed to give her deceased father a final kiss, lifted by her nurse and gazing with bewildered eyes at her mother's grief-stricken face. Numerous flowers are scattered on the bed, some of them fallen onto the carpeted floor of the room. Alfonso XII died of tuberculosis on November 25, 1885, at the age of 28, in El Pardo Palace. This is undoubtedly one of the clearest examples of opportunism by a painter in taking advantage of recent political circumstances or events as the subject of a composition submitted to national exhibitions, in order to gain the favour of the official jury, the public and the critics.