The Kiss, 1907
Gustav Klimt
Oil on canvas · 180 x 180 cm
Two lovers dissolve into a single field of gold ornament.
Two lovers merge into a single shimmering column of gold, wrapped in Klimt's dense mosaic of pattern. Painted at the height of his 'golden phase' around 1908, it turns an embrace into something timeless and iconic — the ultimate Art Nouveau statement.
What you're looking at
The gold is real metal. Klimt laid gold leaf onto the canvas, so the surface genuinely reflects rather than merely depicting a gleam. The two figures are told apart by their ornament and nothing else: his robe is black-and-white rectangles, hers is circles and flowers. Only three areas are painted naturalistically — her face, his neck, and their hands — everything else dissolves into pattern. Look at her feet: the flowered meadow simply stops, and the pair are kneeling at the edge of a drop.
On a Frame TV
Exactly square, which is the hardest shape there is to put on a 16:9 panel — the clean crop would have to discard a third of the picture. Use the matted file without hesitation. Gold on a lit screen is the one case where a Frame genuinely outperforms a print, so this is worth a wall that gets looked at.
Belvedere · Visit it in Vienna →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
The gold in Klimt's The Kiss is not all gold, and nobody is kissing →
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Gustav Klimt.
