The Kiss (1908-1909) by Gustav KlimtBelvedere
The Kiss- Gustav Klimt
The Belvedere is home to the world’s most famous kiss, and the work of Austria’s best loved artist, Gustav Klimt. The painting’s ornate vibrancy and myriad patterns were influenced by Klimt's diligent study of Byzantine mosaics. Zooming in on the lovers’ robes reveals just how many different styles and techniques Klimt incorporated, and how he is able to keep the bright gold from appearing too lurid, by adding blocks of darker blacks and blues. Although the colors might be a little showy, the kiss itself is imbued with a tenderness— look at the way in which he gently holds her head, and she peacefully closes her eyes. No wonder it endures as one of the most romantic paintings in the history of art!
Death and Girl- Egon Schiele
The Kiss may hang only a couple of rooms away in the Upper Belvedere, but it could not be further removed tonally from Egon Schiele’s bleak and morbid depiction of an embrace between “death” and a young woman. The two figures are grotesquely emaciated, their features are disturbingly elongated and exaggerated; their faces are discolored and eerily lifeless, and blend with the similarly brown and misshapen landscape. Whether you like this painting or not, you have to acknowledge its ability to shock us even today.
Death and Girl (1915) by Egon SchieleBelvedere
Napoleon at the Great St Bernard- Jacques Louis David
This painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps by French Neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David is one of five versions of this hugely iconic portrait. It portrays the French leader leading his troops across the mountains into Italian, where they were victorious in battle against Austrian forces. David was an ardent fan of Napoleon and was honored to be commissioned to create a piece of propaganda art to immortalise and glorify the future ruler. Pointing towards the mountain’s apex, Napoleon— who in reality was more stout that this idealised rendering— is not only showing us (and his soldiers) where they’re heading, but that they’re strong enough to overcome any obstacle. The fact that his hand is ungloved may be a sign that Napoleon wanted to be seen as a gracious leader extending his hand in peace to his enemies.
Napoleon at the Great St. Bernard (1801) by Jaques-Louis DavidBelvedere
Rocky Landscape in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains- Caspar David Friedrich
This painting is perhaps less dramatic than some of the better known works by German Romantic Caspar David Friedrich, but it still showcases the artist’s trademark ability to make any landscape seem otherworldly and sublime. Look at how the fog rises from the valley giving the whole scene an eerie, ghostly feel. Many of Friedrich’s paintings include a wanderer taking in his environment, but here he places us, the viewers, in the role of the explorer. The fallen tree and overgrown roots suggests that this is untouched land, and Friedrich lets us imagine that we’re the first travellers to come across this stunning view.
Rocky Landscape in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains (1822/1823) by Caspar David FriedrichBelvedere
The Plain at Auvers- Vincent Van Gogh
With his mental stability in a state of rapid deterioration in this time, Van Gogh took comfort in the final two months of his life by producing an incredible seventy paintings of the Parisian suburb of Auvers (including the famous Church at Auvers) where he was staying. Here we get a sense of the flatness of the terrain in the region in the way in which the land and the sky blur into one another on the horizon. The fields, some verdant, others golden with crops, make the landscape seems like a beautiful, designed patchwork quilt. If we zoom in on the foreground we can make out some blossoming flowers, rendered in tiny explosive flecks of dots of red, yellow and orange paint. It’s a world away from the arid land in Schiele’s Death and Girl.
The Plain of Auvers (1890) by Vincent van GoghBelvedere
