Spain and the Netherlands

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. A page in the costume of the Age of Phillip IV evokes Velázquez and Murillo. The
figure casts an admiring glance toward a lady holding a fan and attired in the “dress of people of elegance, as familiar from the portraits of Anthony van Dyck” (1599–1641). For further Information on the building see: Cäcilia Bischoff, The Kunsthistorisches Museum. History, Architecture, Decoration, Vienna 2010