What the painting shows

Florentine Cinquecento and Quattrocento by Klimt fills the architectural spandrel spaces flanking a curved arch. On the left spandrel, representing the Cinquecento, the biblical David stands clad only in a loincloth. His straight-legged body faces forward against a golden background while his dark head turns in profile. He holds a long, blood-marked sword with a sickle-curved tip beside the artist’s initials, G·K·. David stretches his arm outward to rest Goliath’s dark head on an inscribed pedestal beneath a gold tondo.

On the right, Venus embodies the Quattrocento beside a small, naked Cupid. She leans against the architectural curve with a curved hip, bare except for golden bracelets and a gem-studded belt beneath her breasts. Her dark, curled hair is pinned with ribbons in front of a golden scallop shell. While her right hand bends backward along the stone moulding, her left arm wraps around Cupid, who looks back toward her face.

The story behind it

Klimt completed the decoration between 1890 and 1891 for the museum staircase. Art historians consider Michelangelo’s David the main model for Klimt’s warrior, while paintings by Sandro Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo provided models for Venus. The composition forms part of Klimt’s early works, painted in oil directly onto the plaster wall.

Unlike traditional Renaissance pairings where love brings peace to war, Klimt shows the figures turned away from one another. A Latin proverb on the pedestal notes that whom God wishes to destroy, he first drives mad. David remains so caught up in violence that he ignores love, while Venus turns her back on the warrior to embrace Cupid. The piece illustrates Klimt’s distinctive treatment of historical allegories.

Where to see it

You can see the painting in person at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It remains on the west wall of the museum’s grand staircase, positioned in the high spandrel and intercolumniation spaces beside the arcade.