Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities

From the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection, a change of flooring and presentation, gave way to the delights of Ancient Greece and Rome with my entry into Gallery 10 and its Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities.

The 2,500 objects in the collection, some on permanent display, span a period of more than three millennia and range from Bronze Age ceramics of Cyprus dating from the 3rd millennium B.C. to early Medieval finds.

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This collection, one of the best of its kind, covers three main areas in a beautifully atmospheric gallery layout – the unique and spectacular antique cameos and gemstones; the treasure troves dating from the period of the great migrations and the early Middle Ages (such as the golden Treasure of Nagy Szent Miklós); and the collection of vases (with such masterpieces as the Brygos Cup).

Votive Statue of a Man from Cyprus

Among the other highlights of the collection are the larger-than-life Votive Statue of a Man from Cyprus, the Amazonian Sarcophagus, the bronze tablet with the famous Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, the Theseus Mosaic from Salzburg and the Youth from the Magdalensberg, to name only a few.

Sarcophagus with Fighting Amazons

Sarcophagus of the Muses

Sarcophagus with a Scene of Abduction of Persephone by Hades

However, though a lot of thought has been clearly put by the curators into how the items were displayed in this collection, surprisingly there was little English information for such wonderful displays and we needed an guidebook or an audio guide to really appreciate what we’re seeing.

Youth from the Magdalensberg

At Gallery 11, we saw a huge original mosaic in the floor. Taken from a 4th century villa near Salzburg, it tells one of the versions of the story of Ariadne and Theseus (of Minotaur-slaying fame).

Marble Statue of Discobolus (2nd century AD)

Torso of the Javelin Bearer Doryphoros (2nd Century AD)

As we walked toward the entrance portal of Gallery 13, we were welcomed by a statue of a majestic Emperor Vespasian, his head is from 70 A.D. and his torso from sometime in the first century.

Gallery 13 (Busts)

This bust gallery, possessing an eerie quality enhanced by the subtle and varied lighting and shadows cast on the marbled floor, has a delightful display of busts, each on its own high column. We also saw mummy portraits placed on mummies in Rome-influenced Egypt in the second century AD.

Gallery 14 (Greek Vases)

Gallery 14 features real Greek vases and other ceramics (not the kind from souvenir shops in Athens and Kos).  The “Kabinetts,” leading off the rooms, each focus on a special topic such as Cypriot ceramics from the Bronze and Iron Ages, Etruscan Art, etc..

Gallery 14 (Greek Vases)

The magically dark Gallery 15 features bronze statues of the gods and other figures of mythology, each piece lit with pools of light that makes a dramatic impression, plus Roman tableware, jewelry, decorated oil lamps and fibulae (brooches for fastening clothing).

Marble Sphinx from Roman Egypt (150 – 200 AD)

The darkly lit Gallery 16, with wall cabinets and spotlights, features brightly-colored miniature reliefs (cameos) and engraved gems from Rome which were used as signet rings, pendants and other adornments. The room also features the famous Gemma Augustea, a large cut onyx stone, from 9-12 A.D., honoring the Emperor Augustus.

Spot-lit cabinets at Gallery 17 house a wide range of Roman and early Germanic jewelry and other items of bronze, silver and gold coming from various finds, such as Nagy Szent Miklós (in modern-day Romania) or Zalesie (modern-day Poland).

Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities: Raised Ground Floor, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Maria Theresien-Platz, 1010 Vienna. Tel: +43 1 525 24- 4902. E-mail: info.ansa@khm. Open Tuesdays – Sundays, 10 AM – 6 PM, Thursdays, 10 AM – 9 PM.

Kunstkammer

The Kunstkammer Wien, the most important collection of its kind in the world, has 2,162 fabulous artworks passionately collected by the Habsburg emperors (above all Rudolf II) and archdukes over centuries.

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Ibonized and ormolu cabinet of Ferdinand ll von Tirol

One of the most important chambers of art and wonders in the world, it was opened to the public on March 1, 2013 after years of extensive refurbishment (between 2002 and 2012).

Gold Platter with a Relief (Christoph Lencker)

This “museum within the museum” has 20 galleries which fills the lower eastern wing of the main building of the museum. On an area of 2,717 sq. m., more than 1,000 years of history can be experienced in the Kunstkammer.

Emperor Charles V (Leone Leoni, 1555, bronze)

A Carolingian ivory tablet from the 9th century is the oldest exhibit while a ceiling painting, from the year 1891, is the youngest.

Golden Candlesticks

The Kunstkammer, aside from showcasing the standout items of various Habsburg collections put together from the 16th century onwards, also demonstrated the best of nature and man’s creative abilities.

Altar of St. Jerome (Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen)

The encyclopedic and universal collections of the Kunst-und Wunderkammern (arts and natural wonders rooms) from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Baroque periods attempted to reflect the entire knowledge of the day.

Jacob and Rachel (Democrito Gandolfi)

Of particularly interest are the desirable, exotic, rare, curious and unusual objects, often ascribed with magical powers, such as precious stones, ostrich eggs, coral and shark’s teeth, natural products from which artists created virtuoso works of art.

Cabinet of Archduke Ferdinand II

Among its highlights are numerous other art objects which have been collected since the Middle Ages such as carvings, timepieces, paintings, ivory sculptures, strange scientific instruments, wall-hangings, tapestries, coins, weapons, precious stone vessels, elaborate automatons, sumptuous game boards, drinking games and all sorts of humorous vessels, and a wide range of curiosities from the natural world.

Danae, part of a 6-piece Mythological Representation (Francesco Primaticcio, 1540-50)

They include examples of fabulous goldsmith work such as the celebrated and precious Saliera (“salt cellar,” which dates to the middle of the 16th century) by Benvenuto Cellini (at the heart of the collection) and the valuable  gold and porcelain breakfast service of Maria Theresia; the so-called “Natternzungenkredenz” (around 1450), including fossil sharks’ teeth, considered to be the mystical remains of dragons; the natural cast of a real toad; outstanding sculptures such as the Krumau Madonna; magnificent bronze statuettes; a “Narwalhornbecher” from the 17th century claimed at the time to be made from a unicorn horn (actually a narwhal tusk); the Dragon Bowl made from lapis lazuli; delicate and bizarre ivories; carved rhinoceros horns, a valuable musical clock in the shape of a ship, a glass container (tafelaufsatz) shaped like a heron with real heron feathers; etc.

Large tafelaufsatz in the shape of a heron (Saracchi Workshop, ca. 1590)

Each gallery, with its excellent design and layout carrying you along on a journey through changing times and techniques, has an overview explaining its theme and/or relevance to art and history.  As you move from room to room, different art forms progressed, at different rates, in different regions.

Kaiser Franz I (Camillo Pacetti)

Each item has an accompanying short description and touch screens provide further background information, more detail on selected exhibits and the genealogy of the Habsburg dynasty.

Gallery 19 (Golden Hall)

Gallery 19 (Golden Hall) impressed us with its huge ceiling painting “Mäcene the House of Habsburg,” the magnum opus of the now almost-forgotten history painter Julius Victor Berger which pays homage to the Habsburg art patrons and their favorite artists.

Mäcene the House of Habsburg (Julius Victor Berger, 1891)

In Gallery 20 is the ivory collection of Emperor Leopold I, nephew of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. They include the impressive ivory piece, from 1700, depicting Archduke Leopold adorned with angels, with a foot resting on his vanquished Ottoman foes following the famous defeats of the Ottoman armies, most notably at the Siege of Vienna in 1683 (though he was nowhere to be seen at that time in Vienna).

Gallery 20

There’s also the detailed (check out the mind-blowing detail of the battle of Amazons) ivory and cedar reliefs, from the late 1600s and early 1700s, by Ignaz Elhafen; and the ivory reliefs by Johann Ignaz Bendl (he also contributed to the famous plague column in Vienna’s city center).

Ivory Goblet (Marcus Heiden)

Gallery 22 displays the Master of the Furies, gorgeous ivory statuettes by an unknown artist, and a delightful ivory phoenix from 1610/1620.

In Gallery 23 (to the side of Gallery 22), we found 17th century clocks and scientific instruments from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.

Handstones

Gallery 24, which continues the theme of intertwining nature and art, features items from the 16th century Innsbruck collection of Archduke Ferdinand II including the so-called hand stones (pieces of ore with biblical or mining scenes carved into them, with added decorative elements and models); plus pieces of glassware and crystal ware from Milanese workshops (e.g. Saracchi, Miseroni), many of which mimic the human body, plants, animals, and shells and often incorporate natural materials and surprisingly practical functions (a tortoise becomes a powder flask, a nautilus shell becomes a drinking vessel, etc.).

Dragon Shell (Gasparo Miseroni, 1565-70) features a fierce dragon motif in gold, enamel, rubies, emeralds and pearls

Gallery 25 houses some of the sumptuous and artistic settings of the Habsburgs such as rhino horns and ostrich eggs.

Gallery 25

Often attributed with medicinal and magical powers by Europeans, these settings often served to emphasize the exotic nature of each of these items.

Displays include a figure of an African below an ostrich shell; a 1611 silver goblet made from rhino horn and decorated with warthog tusks; a giant 1592 basin and ewer decorated with pearl and garnets (its edges have metal casts of frogs and insects, in the 1500s people believed that putting one in a drink got rid of poison); and a large bezoar (indigestible masses found in the gastrointestinal system of animals, in this case a llama) on a gold, emerald and ruby base from the late 1500s.

Lidded rhinoceros-horn goblet with warthog tusks

Ornamental basin with ewer (Nikolaus Schmidt, ca. 1592)

Gallery 26, covering the stonecutting arts, features 17th century landscapes and cityscapes built, mosaic-like, from precious agate, jasper and hornstone.  On display are a small private altar, from 1590/1600, which features Christ and the Woman of Samaria at Jacob’s Well by Gian Ambrogio Caroni, constructed from precious gems and metals (rock crystal, jasper, agates, lapis lazuli, emeralds, amethyst, gold, enamel, gilded silver and pearls).

Gallery 27, holding items from the Prague collection of Emperor Rudolf II, showed us how art, science and engineering began to combine with its displays of various automatons such as a mechanical ship from 1585 (the sails are miniature paintings); mechanical clocks from the late 1500s and early 1600s; sundials; vessels made of precious stone (believed to have healing or restorative powers), and much more.

Automaton in the form of a ship (Hans Schlottheim, 1585)

There’s also a narwhal goblet, made of narwhal ivory, gold, enamel, diamonds, rubies, and agate, from 1600/1605; a gilded silver and enamel ornamental ewer and basin from 1601/1602; the bronze figure of a Flying Mercury, from 1585, by Giambologna; and the German Mercury figure.

Flying Mercury (Giambologna)

Gallery 28 features measuring instruments; precious, 16th and 17th century carved coconuts gilded with silver; a wood, bronze and pearl cabinet from 1560/1570 designed for storing art.

Vicky and Grace at Gallery 29

At Gallery 29, we found the famous 1543 Saliera by Benvenuto Cellini (also known as the Cellini salt cellar), a golden salt and pepper dispenser for the table estimated to be worth about US$65 million.  An allegory for the cosmos in gold, enamel, ebony and ivory, it was originally owned by King Francis I and given by King Charles IX of France, the king’s grandson, as a present to Archduke Ferdinand II.

Saliera or Salt Cellar (Benvenuto Cellini)

Stolen in 2003 by an opportunistic passerby who scaled the scaffolding during renovations and disappeared off with the work, authorities recovered the Saliera in 2006 unharmed, found interred in a forest near Vienna.

Winged Mompelgarder Altar

In Gallery 30 is the Mompelgarder Altar, a ca. 1540, bright and colorful winged altarpiece created in the workshop of Heinrich Füllmaurer, whose many panels bear inscriptions from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible.

Gallery 31 features a sensational, incredibly detailed (check out the small flowers and distant backgrounds accompanying the two horsed emperors), carved backgammon set, from 1537. A statement of power and prestige, its pieces depict intricate literary scenes and its board back shows representations of the Habsburg dynasty, its lands, and its spiritual (though not actual) predecessors, such as Roman emperors.

At Gallery 32, we saw how art spread beyond its original (mostly religious) context, with artists starting to push back the borders of what’s possible.  This is best illustrated by two bronze figures (ca. 1580), with its fluidity of apparent movement not seen in earlier bronzes, by Giambologna whose sculptures aim to create statues that invite you to walk around them. The gallery also displays an early automaton (or mechanical model) – a female musician from the late 1500s.

Busts of the family of Emperor Leopold I (Paul Strudel, 1695)

Gallery 34 displays 15th century figures and busts.  Highlights here include the Vanitas Group of three figures, representing the beauty and transience of youth, carved from a single piece of limewood; a bronze statue of Bellerophon taming Pegasus, from around 1481 by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a pupil of Donatello (creator of the famous bronze David) and a teacher of Michelangelo (creator of another famous David); and a collection of plaquettes (small bronze reliefs) from the 15th century and later.

Vanitas group by Michel Erhart or Jörg Syrlin the Elder, ca.1470-80

In Gallery 35 is the so-called Adder’s Tongues Credenza from around 1450, an ornament embedded with fossil shark’s teeth (considered to be dragon’s tongues, they were thought to sweat or change color when near poisoned food or drink) as well as a tiny, finely detailed boxwood rosary pendant displaying the Passion of Christ, a truly astonishing work of art.

Galleries 36 and 37 mainly feature ecclesiastical items from the 11th to 14th centuries which dominated early art. On display are a griffon-shaped aquamanile, basically a water jug used for the ritualistic washing of hands, from around 1125.

Kunskammer Wien: Raised Ground Floor, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Maria Theresien-Platz, 1010 Vienna. Tel: +43 1 525 24- 4902. E-mail: info.ansa@khm. Open Tuesdays – Sundays, 10 AM – 6 PM, Thursdays, 10 AM – 9 PM. Audio guides, in both English and German (see here for general visitor tips for the museum), are also available in the museum entrance hall..

How to Get There: take U1 going to Leopoldau at Keplerplatz, transfer to U2 going to Aspernstrabe at Karlsplatz, exit at Volkstheater.

The author beside the painting of Helene Fourment (Peter Paul Rubens), Picture Gallery, Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, developed from the art collections of the House of Habsburg (notably Rudolf II in the late-16th/early-17th century and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in the mid-17th century), is one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world with numerous masterpieces from European art history.

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Grablegung Christi (Tizan)

Ecce Homo (Tiziano Vecellio, 1543)

It occupies two wings of the first floor with one wing focusing on 16th-century Venetian painting (Titian, Paolo Veronese, Tintoretto, etc.), Spanish and French works and the other on Dutch painting (Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, etc.), 17th-century Flemish painting (Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, etc.) and German Renaissance painting (Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, etc.).

John the Baptist Preaching (Bernardo Strozzi)

Mary with Child and Saints (Perugino)

The gallery includes the world’s largest collection of works by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, painted depictions of 16th century life which are unique worldwide and are an absolute joy.

The author (left) beside the painting of The Peasant Wedding of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1568)

Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel)

The Massacre of the Innocents (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)

It features such famous works as the iconic The Tower of Babel (1563), The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559), Children’s Games (1560),  The Procession to Calvary (1564), The Gloomy Day (February-March, 1565), The Return of the Herd (October-November, 1565), The Hunters in the Snow (December-January, 1565), The Peasant and the Nest Robber (Bauer und Vogeldieb, 1568), The Peasant Wedding (1568/69) and The Peasant Dance (1568/69).

Madonna of the Meadow (Raphael)

Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine and James (Lorenzo Lotto)

Among the other highlights hanging in the hallowed museum walls of the Picture Gallery are its holdings of masterpieces of Europe’s greatest artists from the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries such as:

• Jan van Eyck: Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati (c. 1431)
• Albrecht Dürer: Adoration of the Trinity(1511) and Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I (1519)
• Tintoretto: Susanna and the Elders (1555–56)
• Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Summer(1563)
• Antonello da Messina: San Cassiano Altarpiece(1475–1476)
• Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: Madonna of the Rosary (1606/07), The Crowning with Thorns and David with the Head of Goliath
• Peter Paul Rubens: Ildefonso Altar (1630–32), The Miracles of St. Francis Xavier (1618) and The Fur (Portrait of his wife Hélène Fourment after emerging from the bath, partially wrapped in fur, 1638)
• Raphael: Madonna of the Meadow (1506)
• Rembrandt: Self Portrait (1652)
• Johannes Vermeer: The Art of Painting (1665/66)
• Diego Velázquez: Several portraits of the Spanish royal family, a branch of the Habsburg, sent to Vienna
• Hans Holbein the Younger: Portrait of Jane Seymour (1536/1537)

Homecoming of Hagar (Pietro da Cortona)

Hercules, Dejanira and the centaur Nesius (Paolo Veronese)

The paintings, though hanging in tall galleries, are more or less at eye level, making them easy to view from lovely upholstered sofas.

Cimon and Iphigenaia (Peter Paul Rubens)

The Four Rivers of Paradise (Peter Paul Rubens, 1615)

The protective rails feature accessible, individual descriptions in both German and English.

Bird hunting in Brussels (David Terniers, 1652)

Around 1890, Gustav Klimt, Ernst Klimt and Franz von Matsch painted the areas between and around the arches and columns on the north wall of the main staircase.

Advent … Elizabeth’s Moment (Luca Giordano)

The Triumph of Bacchus (Michaelina Woutiers)

Picture Gallery: First Floor, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Maria Theresien-Platz, 1010 Vienna. Tel: +43 1 525 24- 4902. E-mail: info.ansa@khm. Open Tuesdays – Sundays, 10 AM – 6 PM, Thursdays, 10 AM – 9 PM.

How to Get There: take U1 going to Leopoldau at Keplerplatz, transfer to U2 going to Aspernstrabe at Karlsplatz, exit at Volkstheater.

Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History), also often referred to as the “Museum of Fine Arts,” is housed in its festive palatial building, on the Ringstraße. The term Kunsthistorisches Museum applies to both the institution and the main building.

L-R (standing): Popong Flores, Jandy Layug, the author, Grace Layug, Manny Sta. Maria, Freddie Sta. Maria and Isko Dionela. Seated: Cheska and Kyle Layug

It was opened by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary around 1891, the same time as the Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum) across Maria-Theresien-Platz.

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The ornate interior

The two museums, with identical exteriors,  were commissioned by the Emperor in order to find a suitable shelter for the Habsburgs‘ formidable art collection and to make it accessible to the general public.

Apotheosis Of The Renaissance (Mihaly Munkacsy, 1844-1900, Hungary)

Both were built between 1872 and 1891 according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer.

This rectangular building, with its sandstone façade, is topped with a 60 m. high octagonal dome.  Its interior is lavishly decorated with marble, stucco ornamentations, gold-leaf, and paintings.

Jandy beside sculpture of Theseus Defeats the Centaur (Antonio Canova)

Here are some interesting trivia regarding the museum:

• The museum was the subject of Johannes Holzhausen’s documentary film The Great Museum (2014). It was filmed over two years in the run up to the re-opening of the newly renovated and expanded Kunstkammer rooms in 2013.
• The museum appears, in considerable detail, in the final mission of the video game Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, developed by Illusion Softworks.
• The museum is the setting for director Jem Cohen‘s 2012 feature film Museum Hours. Distributed by The Cinema Guild, it premiered at the 2012 Locarno International Film Festival and was screened in festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival and Maryland Film Festival.
• The museum’s primary Habsburg collections are from the portrait and armor collections of Ferdinand of Tirol, the collections of Emperor Rudolph II (however, the largest part is scattered) and the collection of paintings of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.
• The Cellini Salt Cellar, a sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini, one of the museum’s most important objects, was is featured in an episode of Museum Secrets on the History Channel.
• On May 11, 2003, the Cellini Salt Cellar was stolen but was recovered on January 21, 2006 in a box buried in a forest near the town of Zwettl, Austria.  It was the biggest art theft in Austrian history.

The collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum  include the Picture Gallery, the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection, the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Kunstkammer (Collection of Sculpture and Decorative Arts), the Coin Cabinet and the Library.

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Kunsthistorisches Museum: Maria Theresien-Platz, 1010 Vienna. Tel: +43 1 525 24- 4902. E-mail: info.ansa@khm. Open Tuesdays – Sundays, 10 AM – 6 PM, Thursdays, 10 AM – 9 PM.

How to Get There: take U1 going to Leopoldau at Keplerplatz, transfer to U2 going to Aspernstrabe at Karlsplatz, exit at Volkstheater.

Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere

The highlight of our tour of the Belvedere Palace, the summer residence of  the great art patron and collector Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), was our tour of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (Austrian Gallery), an art museum housed in the Upper Belvedere, one of two palaces that make up the Belvedere.

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The author

Named as such in 1921, this museum houses an extensive and permanent collection which includes several thousand masterpieces from the Middle Ages and Baroque up to the 21^st century contemporary art, focusing on Austrian painters from the Fin de Siècle and Art Nouveau period complemented by the works of international artists.

Further attractions at the museum include key works of French Impressionism and the greatest, outstanding and most important collection of Viennese art from the Biedermeier Collection as well as highlights of the Baroque and Medieval Collection.

Duke Ernst the Iron Saves Cimburgis (Franz Dobyaschofsky, 1850, oil on canvas)

The collection threw a fresh and exciting light on artworks by well known Austrian artists that includes the world’s largest collections of paintings by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Gustav Klimt and the Character Heads by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. Other Austrian artists with works displayed include Rueland Frueauf the Elder, Erika Giovanna Klien, Egon Schiele, Helene Funke, and Oskar Kokoschka.

Cheska admiring “Count Moritz Christian von Fries and his Family,” an oil on canvas painting by François Pascal Simon Gérard

The museum’s display concept offered fresh approaches to these masterpieces of art through four innovative and thematically organized galleries (Austrian Baroque; Habsburg – Myth and Truth; Austria in Exile: Artists in Exile – Destinies in Dark Times; and Austria on the Move) that enlivened the path through the chronologically arranged periods of art in the permanent collection, sparking a multi-layered dialogue between the classics of art history and contemporary artists, for example Erwin Wurm and Christian Philipp Müller.

Empress Maria Theresa with her Children (Heinrich Fuger, tempera on parchment, 1776)

Conceived as a deliberate pause, the magnificent staterooms provides an opportunity to engage with, as well as focus on, issues and questions concerning Austria’s art, identity and history over the course of different epochs. An exciting interaction between past and present, we encountered and experienced an almost complete overview of the development of over 500 years of art history in Austria and, thus, an insight into the country’s history, rediscovering old favorites in a new context.

The Chess game (Josef Danhauser, 1839)

A section in the exhibition is dedicated to the tempestuous history of the Belvedere covering Prince Eugene’s building of the palaces, the foundation of the museum, the signing of the Austrian State Treaty, and its role today as a modern museum.

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (Lovers), 1908–1909. Measuring 180×180 cms., the ornamental character of this masterpiece is enhanced with gold and silver. According to a contemporary rumor, the couple depicted is the artist himself and his lifelong partner Emilie Flöge. which was Bought in 1908 by the Moderne Galerie, Klimt reached the pinnacle of his “golden” phase with “The Kiss.”

At the Galerie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Gallery of 19th- and 20th-Century Art), I found works by the artists of the 1897 Secessionist movement. Most outstanding is Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), one of the movement’s founders.  The heart of the presentation of “Art around 1900” is the collection of 24 of his works (portraits, landscapes, and allegorical scenes), the world’s largest collection of his paintings, which allowed us to trace the evolution of his style, from elegant portraiture (e.g. 1897/1898’s Sonja Krips), through to portraits with abstract elements (1906’s Fritza Riedler), impressionist landscapes (1907’s Flowering Poppies) and, of course, the golden pictures The Kiss (1907/08), his most famous painting, and Judith (1901).

Napoleon at the St. Bernard Pass (Jacques Louis David, 1801. Oil on canvas, 246 x 231 cm.)

Sharing almost equal billing with Klimt is Egon Schiele  (1890-1918).  The museum hosts some of Schiele’s masterpieces, including The Wife of an Artist, The Embrace, Death and the Maiden, and The Family (a self-portrait painted just months before his death in 1918 from Spanish flu; the expressions on their faces suggest that Schiele and his wife almost seem to know what’s coming).

Österreichische Galerie Belvedere: Upper Belvedere, Prinz Eugen-Straße 27, 1030 Vienna, Austria. Tel: +43 1 795 57-0 and +43 1 79557134. Open: 10 AM -6 PM. E-mail: info@belvedere.at. Website:  www.belvedere.at.  Admission (Upper Belvedere): €16 (adult)

How to Get There: take U1 going to Reumannplatz at Stephansplatz, exit at Hauptbahnhof, then walk.