The Virgin
1913 · Narodni Galerie, Prague
Sleeping women tangled into a whirlpool of pattern and flowers, one of them at the center just about to wake up.
★ 5.7
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Danae
1907 · Private collection
Zeus arrives as a stream of gold coins and ornament between her thighs, and Klimt makes no attempt to be subtle about it.
★ 6.3
Death and Life
1916 · Leopold Museum, Vienna
Death stands at the left in a patterned robe holding a club, watching a heap of sleeping people who have not noticed him.
★ 6.5
The Two Fridas
1939 · Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City), Mexico City
Two versions of herself hold hands with one artery running between them, clamped shut. She painted it as her marriage to Rivera fell apart.
★ 7.7
Portrait of Adele Block Bauer
1907 · Neue Galerie, New York City
Only the face and hands are painted naturally and the rest is gold. The Nazis seized it, and a long restitution case eventually got it back.
★ 8.0
The Kiss (Klimt)
1908 · Galerie Belvedere, Vienna
Two lovers kneel wrapped in a single gold robe, rectangles patterning his side of it and circles hers, on a meadow of flowers.
★ 8.9
The Thinker
1904 · Musee Rodin, Paris
Rodin first made this figure as Dante brooding over the Gates of Hell, then enlarged him and set him thinking alone on a rock.
★ 9.3