Compositional Sketch for "Medicine"

Seen here is the only existing oil study for a monumental work that was created by Viennese modern master Gustav Klimt at the start of the twentieth century and destroyed at the end of World War II.

In 1894 the Austrian Ministry of Culture and Education commissioned Klimt and his colleague Franz Matsch to paint allegorical depictions for the University of Vienna: Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence, and Theology, which would surround a large central canvas devoted to Enlightenment. Intended to cover the ceiling of the University’s newly built Great Hall, these works were expected to inspire awed enthusiasm for learning and scientific progress.

In his study for Medicine, Klimt created a dramatic, dynamic composition. Hygieia, Greek goddess of health and cleanliness, stands in the lower foreground, identified by her mistletoe wreath and the bowl in her hand. A provocative female nude floats above her to the left, alongside a revolving column of symbolic figures. In this vortex, sickness is represented as a gaunt woman in red, death as a skull emerging from a diaphanous black shroud. A man’s arm reaches out as if to grab the nude woman, drawing life into death. The study shows Klimt’s style in transition. Its sweeping brushstrokes, swirling figures, and dawn lighting reflect Baroque theatricality; Symbolist sensibility is expressed in the otherworldly, dreamlike face of the floating nude. The emergence of Klimt’s signature Secessionist style may be seen in Hygieia’s rigid frontal pose and gold-encircled head, and in the juxtaposition between decorative and naturalistic elements.||When Klimt presented this study to the artistic commissions of the Ministry of Education and the University of Vienna in 1898, he was asked to either clothe the nude woman or replace her with a male figure. Eventually the Ministry granted Klimt creative freedom. But the final version of Medicine, presented at the 1901 Vienna Secession exhibition, shocked the public. Physicians and professors were infuriated by the artist’s focus on the powerlessness of medicine. His allegories of Philosophy and Jurisprudence caused similar uproars. In 1905 the University decided that the paintings would not be installed; they returned to Klimt’s studio and were sold. Under the Nazis, the two Jewish-owned works were “Aryanized,” and all three were sent to Schloss Immendorf for safekeeping during the bombing of Vienna. In one of the war’s last episodes of artistic tragedy-irony, all were destroyed in May 1945 when SS troops set fire to the castle.

The compositional sketch had been purchased from the artist by Dr. Hermann Wittgenstein and remained in his family until acquired by the Israel Museum in 2014. As the only study in oil surviving from Klimt’s work for the University of Vienna, it is the most significant remnant of this controversial project.

From the Israel Museum publications:
3x50@50: IMJ Collection Highlights, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2015