Old italian Art

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. In this painting Gustav Klimt focuses on the two figures, placing less emphasis on the
artworks. A young man attired in the Florentine manner of the fifteenth century pauses from his reading and observes the female figure opposite who is surrounded by a magnificent halo. Her gaze is cast on a putto with halo, wings, and shield. Above, a bronze bust of Dante is to be seen. The figures are accompanied by a frieze of floral garlands and angels’ heads based on the work of the Florentine Luca della Robbia (c. 1400–82). For further Information on the building see: Cäcilia Bischoff, The Kunsthistorisches Museum. History, Architecture, Decoration, Vienna 2010