This watercolour, signed on the right in the center “Hayez Fran.co”, is not a preparatory study indeed, but a d’après from a particularly appreciated painting, according to a frequent practice of Hayez. It is the famous The kiss. Episode of youth. Costumes of the XIV century (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera), presented in 1859 at the annual exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. The watercolor is quite faithful to the original, except for the simplified background.
The artist painted it as a gift for his dear friend Giuseppina Negroni Prati Morosini. The work is mentioned for the first time in the collection of the Vincenzo Negroni Prati Morosini heirs in 1962 and in the same year it entered the Ambrosiana collections, together with four portraits of the same family executed by Hayez himself, including that of Giuseppina Negroni Prati Morosini.
