Belvedere Art Gallery, Vienna

1. Belvedere The Baroque Palace and Art Gallery Vienna, Austria All rights reserved. Available free for non-commercial and non-profit use only First created. 12 Sep 2010. Version 1.1. London. Jerry Tse

2. The palace, home for Austrian paintings. Belvedere is a Baroque Palace with a beautiful garden that has a magnificent view of the city. The palace is made up of the Upper Belvedere, Lower Belvedere, Orangerie and the Grand Stables. Since 1903 the Upper Belvedere has been used to house the primarily 19C and 20C paintings of the city, with special emphasis on Austrian artists. Amongst its collections are paintings belonging to the Austrian artists, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Friedrich von Amerling and the sculpture heads of Franz Xaver Messerschmit.

3. Belvedere was built in 1721-23, as a summer residence.

5. Painted in c1760 by the Venetian painter Bernado Bellotte, nephew to Canaletto.

8. Entrance hall to the gallery

11. The first owner Belvedere was built as a summer palace for Prince Eugene of Savoy, the brilliant military commander whose strategies helped to vanquish the Turk in 1683.

12. An eccentric sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmit was a German Austrian sculptor famous for his ‘Character heads of faces contorted in extreme facial expressions. He was known to suffering from an undiagnosed digestive complaint. In order to focus his thoughts away from his condition, Messerschmidt pinches himself and observed the resulting facial expression in a mirror. He then set to record them in his sculptured heads.

14. Jacques Louis David - the Neoclassic master of French propagandist

15. German Romanticism - Casper David Friedrich View of Elba. 1805. Caspar David Friedrich.

17. Friedrich von Amerling (1803-1887) He was an Austro-Hungarian portrait painter in the court of Franz Josef. He is one of the outstanding Austrian portrait painters of the 19C. Because of his achievements in painting, in 1878 Amerling was elevated to the nobility, with the title, Friedrich, knight of Amerling.

20. Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller (1793 - 1865) He was a very versatile romantic Australian painter. He painted portraits, landscapes, still lives and peasant lives. All of his paintings are exemplified by accurate observations, meticulous details and luminous atmosphere. He also passionately believed that art should be based on a close study of nature, as oppose to idealized nature. He was also a professor of paintings at the Vienna Academy.

31. There is a good collection of Impressionists’ paintings in the gallery.

39. Gustav Klimt Belvedere has the best collection of the Symbolist, Gustav Klimt, the most well known modern painter of Austria. His works explored the themes of beauty, eroticism and the relationship between man and woman. Apart from paintings he produced thousands of drawings. At the turn of the century, Klimt became interested in Symbolism and Art Nouveau. With others Viennese artists, they founded the Vienna Secession.

40. Klimt was inspired by this painting by Diego Velazquez.

42. Gustav Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ The Kiss is Klimt’s most famous masterpiece. Unlike other of his painting, the woman becomes submissive and yields to the man. In the painting, the man and woman were in a interlocking embrace, merging into one, a union of the sexes. Yet they are different, as the man is covered by neutral coloured rectangles and the woman covered by brightly coloured concentric circles. These symbols are painter’s comments of the male and female characters.

45. Egon Schiele (1890 - 1918) He is an Austrian painter and a protégé of Gustav Klimt. Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20C. His paintings are characterized by twisted body and expressive lines. He was an early exponent of Expressionism.

48. The End Music by Johann Strauss II - Annen Polka All rights reserved. Available free for non-commercial and non-profit use only