Words Edel Cassidy
Few images are as instantly recognisable as The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. Painted between 1907 and 1908, the work shows a couple locked in an intimate embrace, their bodies wrapped in flowing robes of gold against a shimmering, otherworldly backdrop. The man bends over the woman, who kneels at the edge of a meadow scattered with flowers, poised between a richly decorated, almost cosmic space and the natural world beneath her.
No visit to Vienna is complete without a trip to the Belvedere Palace, one of the city’s most iconic landmarks. This former summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy, now a museum, comprises two palaces, Upper and Lower Belvedere, linked by magnificent formal gardens. It is here, in the Upper Belvedere, that The Kiss is permanently displayed.
Seeing the painting quietly unsettles expectation. I had always imagined it smaller, more contained, and while I knew it was square, many reproductions suggest a rectangular frame. In reality, its square composition gives it a surprising sense of presence and structural balance. It is a rare experience to encounter a work that feels both familiar and entirely new at the same time.
What held my attention most was not simply the embrace itself, but how Klimt constructed it. The painting is alive with different applications of material and texture. The gold leaf catches and reflects light, giving the central figures a subtle, shifting luminosity. They seem almost active, as if they exist in a different state to the quieter, matt meadow below them.
The background itself is a striking technical achievement. Gustav Klimt was known to apply gold leaf over a prepared surface and then work back into it with paint, glazes and intricate patterning, often combining matt and burnished gold to create subtle shifts in tone. Here this layered approach is clearly visible. The gold does not sit flat but feels built up and varied, catching the light differently across the surface. This gives the background its depth and quiet movement, rather than allowing it to appear flat or purely decorative. Gold, of course, was central to Klimt’s practice – his father was a goldsmith and that deep familiarity is evident in the confidence and control of its use here.
A sense of contrast runs throughout the painting. The man’s robe is structured with bold, geometric forms, rectangles and blocks, while the woman’s garment is filled with softer, circular and floral motifs. The visual language is clear without being overstated: masculine and feminine, structured and organic, held in tension but also in harmony.
The most striking technical contrast, however, is found at the base of the work. Beneath the brilliance of the lovers lies the meadow, where the paint is noticeably thin. Unlike the sculptural quality of the gold above, the flowers are rendered in delicate oil washes, with the weave of the canvas visible alongside intentional exposures of the white ground. This matt, almost fragile treatment grounds the painting in the earthly realm.
Klimt bridges these two worlds – the celestial and the physical at the woman’s feet. Here, fine golden vines creep down from her robe, beginning to dissolve into the floral field. It is a subtle but masterful transition: the heavy, textured gold of the figures merging with the pastel, translucent paint of the natural world.
The genius of The Kiss lies not in any single element – not the gold, nor the embrace, nor the contrast alone but in how Klimt holds these forces in perfect equilibrium. It is a painting that rewards slow looking, revealing new subtleties on close inspection. In the hushed galleries of the Upper Belvedere, surrounded by the palace’s own Baroque splendour, it feels exactly where it belongs – poised between the physical and the imagined. That feeling lingers long after leaving the palace and that, perhaps, is the mark of a true masterpiece.
- ‘Facing The Kiss’ is published in Anthology Volume 25. Read more features from this volume or buy it now.
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