Old Italian Art
Gustav Klimt (1891)
Gustav Klimt’s <strong>Old Italian Art</strong> (1891) crowns the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s grand staircase with a shimmering allegory of trecento–quattrocento culture. A Florentine <strong>reader</strong>, a <strong>haloed</strong> saint-like figure in brocaded gold, putti, and a bust of <strong>Dante</strong> articulate a lineage of learning and piety, all fused to the building’s gilded architecture. Klimt’s patterned textiles and hovering angels already signal his move from Ringstraße historicism toward a <strong>decorative modern</strong> vision <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.
