A winged skeleton bends over a handsome young man and kisses his temple. He has his eyes closed. He’s not resisting.
El petó de la mort (“The Kiss of Death”) is a marble sculpture from 1930 in the Poblenou cemetery in Barcelona, on the tomb of the Llaudet family (Josep Llaudet i Soler was a textile manufacturer). It’s the most famous sculpture in the cemetery, and it turns up in Barcelona guidebooks.
Who made it isn’t completely clear: it’s signed by Jaume Barba, a marble carver then in his seventies, but the final design was probably by his son-in-law, Joan Fontbernat, inspired by a relief by the Italian sculptor Lorenzo Maroni in Milan’s Monumental Cemetery.
Romantic and terrible at the same time. Death here isn’t a threat but a lover, or a redemption, and the tomb carries lines by Jacint Verdaguer about youth “falling into death’s kiss”.