The Works on paper collection addresses the iconography of life’s ages and the hours of day and night. Since Antiquity, writers, doctors, and philosophers have divided human life into three, four and seven ages. Artists have enthusiastically engaged this theme as seen in the work of Marten de Vos and Henry Moore, both inspired by Shakespeare. Then there are allegories for day and night, including a series of gouaches by the renowned painter from the Renaissance, Raphael, who created them to decorate the Vatican palace. They are found alongside imagined allegories by Ferdinand Hodler and Alfons Mucha.

The exhibition ends with a focus on various representations of the four principal moments of the day (morning, noon, afternoon, evening/night), especially from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, through the work of Charles Le Brun, Hendrick Goltzius, Joseph Vernet and William Hogarth.