Following the conclusion of the Sicilian leg of the exhibition at the Mandralisca Museum in Cefalù, the exhibition *The Enigma of the Smile: Antonello da Messina between Cefalù and Torino* opens on 12 November at Palazzo Madama.

This exhibition project, of exceptional scientific and cultural significance, juxtaposes the famous *Portrait of a Man* from the Mandralisca Museum — universally known as ‘the unknown sailor’ — with the *Portrait of a Man* from Palazzo Madama, known as the *Trivulzio Portrait*: two of the absolute pinnacles of Renaissance portraiture, both by Antonello da Messina, both harbouring an enigma — that of the smile — which has never ceased to intrigue the viewer.

The exhibition does not stem from a traditional comparative approach, but from a specific critical hypothesis: to reveal the transformation of the portrait as a site for the construction of modern identity, in which the face becomes a space of consciousness, relationship and thought. The dialogue between the two works, between the two smiles — the ironic and animated one from Cefalù, the restrained and focused one from Trivulzio — allows us to trace the transformation of the fifteenth-century subject: from the individual as a social entity to the individual as an inner presence.

Admission included in the permanent collections ticket