The Virgin

A tangle of young women drifts in sleep, their bodies swept up into a great swirling vortex of vivid, patterned fabric and flowers, a sleeping maiden at the center on the verge of waking. Gustav Klimt makes the Virgin an image of dawning sexuality and dream, the figures dissolving into a whirlpool of ornament and color. Now in Prague, it is among his most sensuous late allegories - the decorative splendor of his golden years turned to a kaleidoscopic study of youth, sleep, and awakening desire, the women half-lost in a riot of blossoming pattern.