What Does Klimt's The Kiss Represent? Gold, Lovers and Vienna in 1908

Gustav Klimt's The Kiss represents a moment of love: a couple locked in an embrace, their bodies wrapped in glittering robes, standing at the edge of a flowery meadow against a flat golden background. Klimt painted it in 1907 and 1908, at the height of what scholars call his "Golden Period", using oil paint with added gold leaf, silver and platinum. Beyond that simple answer, people have read it in several ways, as a portrait of Klimt and his companion, as a scene from Greek myth, or as a picture of the luxurious, anxious mood of Vienna around 1900.

What the painting shows

The canvas is a perfect square, 180 by 180 centimetres. The man bends his head down to press a kiss onto the woman's cheek, so we never see his face; his hands hold her face gently. Her eyes are closed, with one arm around his neck and the other resting on his hand, and she turns her face up to receive the kiss. He wears a crown of vines and a robe printed with geometric patterns and subtle swirls, while she wears a crown of flowers and a flowing dress with floral patterns.

Look at the bottom of the picture. The meadow ends right under the woman's bare feet, as if the couple were standing on the edge of a cliff. That small detail adds tension to an image that otherwise seems calm and sweet. The man's head also reaches almost to the top edge of the canvas, an unusual choice that, like the simplified composition, reflects the influence of Japanese prints.

Who painted it?

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the founders of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists who broke away from the official art establishment. His work helped to define the Art Nouveau style in Europe, and among the Secession artists he was the one most influenced by Japanese art.

Gold ran in his family. His father, Ernst Klimt the Elder, was a gold engraver, and Gustav and his brothers all showed artistic talent early. Early in his career Klimt was a successful painter of conventional decorations for buildings, but as his style became more personal it caused controversy.

A scandal, then a triumph

Just before The Kiss, Klimt had painted a series of large pictures for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. They were attacked as "pornographic", and after that he accepted no more public commissions. He had become something of an enfant terrible, and he wrote that if you cannot please everyone with your art, you should please a few.

The Kiss turned things around. It was first shown in 1908 at the Kunstschau exhibition in Vienna, under the title Liebespaar ("The Lovers"). It was received with enthusiasm, and the Austrian government bought it while it was still unfinished.

Why so much gold?

Klimt's golden style was inspired by a trip to Italy in 1903. In Ravenna he saw the Byzantine mosaics in the Church of San Vitale, and he noticed that their flatness, with little perspective or depth, made the gold shine even more. After that he began to use gold and silver leaf in his paintings in a way no one had done before.

The result mixes many traditions. The gold recalls medieval paintings with gold backgrounds, illuminated manuscripts and old mosaics, while the spirals on the clothes echo Bronze Age art. The patterns themselves belong to Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement. The flat golden background also plays with the tension between two and three dimensions: the faces and hands look real and rounded, while everything around them dissolves into flat decoration.

Who are the lovers?

Nobody knows for certain. It is often thought that Klimt and his lifelong companion, the fashion designer Emilie Flöge, were the models. Others have suggested the composer Alma Mahler, or a model known as "Red Hilda", who looks like the woman in several other Klimt paintings, but there is no record that proves any of these ideas.

Some art historians see a myth instead. One reading connects it to the moment the god Apollo kisses Daphne, from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Another suggests Orpheus and Eurydice, at the instant Orpheus turns to touch her and loses her forever; the woman's slightly see-through look would then mean she is fading away. These are interpretations, not facts, but they explain why the picture can feel both tender and sad.

The embrace before The Kiss

The embracing couple was not a new idea for Klimt. Love and intimacy appear often in his work, and the couple appears earlier in two big decorative projects, the Beethoven Frieze and the Stoclet Frieze. The Beethoven Frieze, finished in 1902 for an exhibition at the Secession building, was painted directly onto the walls.

Where is The Kiss now?

The Kiss hangs in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, in the Upper Belvedere Palace in Vienna. It is considered a masterpiece of the Vienna Secession and probably Klimt's most important work.

Why it still matters

The Kiss is one of those rare images that people put on posters, mugs and wedding cards without knowing much about art. Its power comes from a balance: real human tenderness at the centre, surrounded by pure pattern and gold. It also shows how an artist under attack can answer critics with his best work. Klimt died in 1918 after a stroke and pneumonia, but this golden couple has kept his name alive. Artists still respond to it; in 2013 the Syrian artist Tammam Azzam placed an image of the painting on a bombed building to draw attention to the war in his country.

Learn with The Kiss: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
locked in an embrace	holding each other tightly	The couple are locked in an embrace.
on the edge of	very close to the end of something	They stand on the edge of a meadow.
to turn things around	to change a bad situation into a good one	The painting turned things around for Klimt.
to draw inspiration from	to get ideas from	Klimt drew inspiration from mosaics.
to fade away	to slowly disappear	She seems to fade away in his arms.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a photo of two people, using "locked in an embrace" and "to draw inspiration from".