When Hermione von Preuschen submitted a crowned skeleton to the Berlin Salon in 1888, it was rejected as an antimonarchist scandal—despite neither the artist nor the emperor seeing it that way. Cosimo zu Knyphausen's Gute Nacht at Sebastian Gladstone departs from von Preuschen and Adolph Menzel, turning ballroom figures into skulls, tender goodnight kisses into vanitas meditations. Does death rule, or are we all already dead? Painting, the exhibition suggests, thrives in the question.
