Florence of the Cinquecento and Quattrocento

The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna openend to the public in 1891. Gustav Klimt, his younger brother Ernst, and Franz Matsch executed forty paintings to decorate the spaces between the columns and above the arcades along the walls of the KHM’s main staircase. Personifications – either male and female, or female only – symbolize different stylistic periods, regions or centers of art. All paintings were executed in oil on canvas in the Artists’ studio; in 1891, six months before the formal opening of the museum, they were glued to the walls of the main staircase. With the figure of Goliath in the intercolumnar field Klimt wished to allude to Michelangelo’s David without however “citing the work itself”. Below the decapitated head appears the Latin inscription which translated proclaims, “he who God would ruin, He first makes blind”. To the right, the figure of Venus forms the female pendant. For further Information on the building see: Cäcilia Bischoff, The Kunsthistorisches Museum. History, Architecture, Decoration, Vienna 2010