The Virgin (The Maiden)

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The Virgin (The Maiden): Gustave Klimt

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Gustave Klimt Oil Painting - The Virgin (The Maiden)

Keywords: Virgin, Maiden

Work Overview: The Virgin (The Maiden)
Gustav Klimt
Date: 1913
Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)
Period: Late works
Genre: symbolic painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 200 x 190 cm
Location: National Gallery in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

The Virgins contains multiple flowers, which add to the theme: evolution into womanhood. While sketching for the painting, Klimt wanted his models to make larger than life physical poses. There are six women in the painting (or one woman with four sides to her persona) and all of them seem to be intertwined. The lines are clear and the human themes of love, sexuality and regeneration are obvious in the circular cyclical shape of the work. In painting The Virgins the different life stages are represented by the same woman. Dislocated body parts in outrageous poses move as if under water. The empty shell of a woman's dress at the bottom gives birth to a child (the next generation) via a cascading waterfall of colour.

"I've already thought of everything possible, I've lived hundreds of lives with my thoughts." Perhaps the central sleeping figure is fantasizing possibilities for her self in the six women surrounding her. This is one possible way to account for the cloud-like oval shaped constellation of women with organic patterned scarves and gowns that is the subject of this painting. It may be a complete world in female form and organic pattern. The virgin's gown configured with many spirals metaphorically indicates fertility, continual change and the evolution of the universe.

Both during his lifetime and later, there have always been examples of an eroticizing aim to recreate his art or even go beyond it. Other authors have pointed out that the erotic could be regarded as a socio-political and culturally progressive force. Thus, Klimt is seen as an artist who contributed considerably to the emancipation of women and the rediscovery of the lost power of the erotic element, an artist who was critical of his time and its outmoded cultural morality.15 "Klimt's permanent achievement," wrote Han Bisanz in 1984, "is that he liberated the artistic depiction of human beings from the fetters of morality and opportunism and that he made visible by means of his style, the basic mental images of man's inner life, images that point to a timeless element in the course of a person's individual destiny.16 And finally, as the quoted passage seems to indicate, Klimt can be seen as a psychologist, as someone who analyzed psychological phenomena and who pursued similar aims to those of his great contemporary, Sigmund Freud.

The style of the Virgin is Art Nouveau or Contemporary and the genre is symbolic painting. It is painted using oil on canvas. Its dimensions are 200 by 190 cm. The Virgin is also called the Maiden by other sources.

In describing the Virgin painting, maybe the sleeping woman in the centre is imagining opportunities for herself in the six women around her.

This is one potential way to report for the cloud like round shape group of women with scarves and gowns that have organic patterns, that is the focus of the Virgin painting.

The dressing gown of the virgin arranged with numerous curves symbolically shows fertility, continuous age and the continued evolution of the world.

During Gustav Klimt's lifetime, and later, there seems to always be instances of an eroticising purpose to make his art come alive again or even go further, like in the Virgin. Other writers have said that the show of sexual desire and pleasure can be considered as a social, political and cultural consistent force.

Therefore, Gustav Klimt is viewed as an artist who made a tremendous contribution to the setting free of women and the remembering of the lost impact of the erotic basis, a painter who was a renowned critic of his time and its outdated cultural morals.

An author, Han Bisanz, in 1994, said that the lasting achievement by Gustav Klimt is that he freed the artistic description of people from the shackles of morality and state of opportunism.

He also said that he brought out using his style, the essential description of a human being's life, pictures that show a timeless basis in the series of man's individual capacity.

Finally, as the quoted story seems to show, Gustav Klimt can be viewed as a mentalist, as one who studied psychological events and who chased similar purposes to those of his lifetime's contemporary, Sigmund Freud.

The Virgin is displayed in the Gustav Klimt Museum where all other Gustav Klimt's works can be viewed.

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Finished at the end of 1912 or the beginning of 1913 at the latest, The Virgin is one of the decisive figural allegories of Klimt's late career. The painting is a summation of Klimt's overarching theme of female erotic dream states, in which he explores its various manifestations over life, from virginity to mature sexuality.

The dominant figure of The Virgin lies at the center of the painting, with her swirling drapery covering her parted legs and her naked arms raised high over her entranced face. Six subsidiary female nudes encircle her. Klimt made many life drawings in order to distill the purest tincture of mood and pose.

Klimt's preparatory drawings for The Virgin show an emphasis on contoured outlines, and some of the models display relative three-dimensionality and voluptuousness when compared to Klimt's earlier attraction to emaciated female nudes. The undulating contours of the drawings find echoes in the painting, where the interwoven female nudes swathed in drapery and flowers form a kind of bubble, pulsating through the universe.

With each of his drawings for The Virgin, Klimt strove to capture a specific mood. In the drawing above, the mood was one of closure and introversion. The combined sense of physical and spiritual encumbrance is conveyed by the rear-view, sedentary pose, bowed head, and single arm supporting the body's weight. This voluptuous figure is an early study for the emaciated nude in the lower left of the painting.

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