The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

Two figures, one cloak

A man and a woman kneel at the edge of a flowering meadow, locked together inside one golden robe. He bends over her, his face hidden, ivy in his hair, his hands cradling her head; she kneels with her eyes closed and her face turned so that he kisses her cheek, flowers in her hair and one arm round his neck. The patterns on their clothes tell them apart: his robe is covered in black and white rectangles, hers in coloured circles and flowers. Her bare feet curl over the edge of the meadow, where the ground falls away.

The golden period

Klimt painted it at the height of what is called his golden period, when he laid real gold leaf alongside oil paint. He had seen the Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna in 1903, and the flat, glittering surfaces show it; so does his training in the decorative arts, and his father’s trade as a gold engraver. The canvas is exactly square, and the background is not sky or wall but a dull gold field scattered with specks, which leaves the couple floating outside any real place. The Austrian state bought it in 1908, the year it was first shown, at the Kunstschau exhibition in Vienna.

Where it hangs

It is in the Upper Belvedere in Vienna and measures 180 by 180 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 7,401-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 49 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Belvedere, Vienna · Wikidata Q698487 · Wikimedia Commons