Roman and Venetian Quattrocento
Gustav Klimt (1891)
Gustav Klimt’s Roman and Venetian Quattrocento crowns the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s staircase with a didactic panorama of the Italian fifteenth century, balancing <strong>papal Rome</strong> and <strong>civic Venice</strong>. In the spandrel shown, a saintly female personification in <strong>pontifical vestments</strong> presents the <strong>papal tiara</strong> before a field of classicizing reliefs and Latin script, framed by real marble and gilded capitals. The ensemble fuses architecture and allegory, previewing Klimt’s later <strong>ornamental gold</strong> idiom while teaching viewers to read art through symbols <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.
