The Kiss (Der Kuss)

Gustav Klimt

Oil on canvas with gold leaf, silver, and platinum

Österreichische Galerie Belvedere

One of the most celebrated paintings in Western art history, The Kiss depicts a couple entwined in a tender embrace, their bodies merging into a single golden form as they kneel on a flowery meadow's edge — the man bending to press a kiss to the woman's cheek while she surrenders with closed eyes and upturned face. Painted on a perfectly square canvas, the work shimmers with actual gold, silver, and platinum leaf layered over oil paint, creating an almost sacred, icon-like luminosity inspired by Byzantine mosaics Klimt encountered in Ravenna in 1903. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), the defining master of Vienna's Secession movement, created this masterpiece at the height of his celebrated "Golden Period," fusing Art Nouveau ornamentalism, Japanese compositional influence, and medieval gilding techniques into a wholly original visual language. Displaying The Kiss in your home means living with what many consider the ultimate symbol of transcendent love — a painting so electrifying that the Austrian government bought it before Klimt even finished it, and it has never left Vienna since.