Despite cre­at­ing two of the most famous paint­ings in the his­to­ry of West­ern art, The Last Sup­per and the Mona Lisa, Leonar­do da Vin­ci did not par­tic­u­lar­ly think of him­self as a painter. Sig­mund Freud may have devot­ed sev­er­al hun­dred words to show­ing that the Renais­sance man par excel­lence rarely fin­ished an art­work because of infan­tile psy­cho­sex­u­al con­flicts, but it seems more fit­ting to look at Leonardo’s approach to paint­ing as of a piece with his approach to every­thing: He was sim­ply far more inter­est­ed in process than prod­uct. Even when the prod­uct was a mas­ter­piece-in-the-mak­ing, and Leonar­do’s patrons await­ed, the artist’s rest­less mind was ready to move on before he fin­ished a com­mis­sion.

Such was the case with the Mona Lisa, which Leonar­do nev­er deliv­ered to his client and instead brought with him to France. This paint­ing, in all its unfin­ished mys­tery, may be Leonardo’s best-known work, but it is not — as Evan Puschak, a.k.a. The Nerd­writer, argues above — his best.

That hon­or should be reserved for a paint­ing Leonar­do began in the same year as the Mona Lisa, 1503: The Vir­gin and Child with St. Anne, which he worked on for sev­en years, nev­er deliv­ered to his client (most like­ly the King of France), and left unfin­ished at the time of his death in 1519.

The paint­ing depicts a group­ing of three fig­ures: the infant Christ, wrestling a lamb, his moth­er, attempt­ing to pull him away, and her moth­er, the apoc­ryphal St. Anne, form­ing the sta­ble base and apex of the tri­ad. Behind her head tow­ers a dense moun­tain range, a sym­bol of deep eco­log­i­cal time, says Puschak, just as the lamb in the fore­ground sym­bol­izes the Pas­sion to come. This tran­si­tion from a pre-his­toric past (one far more ancient than the Bib­li­cal sto­ries) to a redeemed future does not ter­mi­nate with the lamb, says Puschak, but with us, the view­er.

The pyra­mi­dal com­po­si­tion recalls Leonardo’s The Vir­gin of the Rocks from 1483. Such group­ings were com­mon in ear­ly Renais­sance paint­ings, but The Vir­gin and Child with St. Anne rep­re­sent­ed a mas­ter­ful refine­ment of the com­po­si­tion and of Leonar­do’s famed sfu­ma­to tech­nique. As Art­dai­ly notes:

In Flo­rence, where it was con­ceived, the Saint Anne quick­ly drew con­sid­er­able atten­tion and can be seen as a water­shed moment in the evo­lu­tion of artis­tic lan­guage, inspir­ing many dis­ci­ples and col­leagues who sought to emu­late Leonar­do’s style and tech­nique in this work. Flo­ren­tines were fas­ci­nat­ed by the var­i­ous car­toons exe­cut­ed by Leonar­do and by the paint­ed work, even in its rough out­lines.

One prepara­to­ry work, the so-called “Burling­ton House Car­toon” (below), shows “the full expres­sion of Leonar­do’s first vision of the Saint Anne theme upon being award­ed the com­mis­sion.”

Image via the Nation­al Gallery

The work also shows the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of a theme that absorbed the artist through­out his life, expressed in ear­li­er works such as The Vir­gin and Child with Cat and The Vir­gin of the Rocks. “These Vir­gin and Child com­po­si­tions tes­ti­fy to Leonar­do’s ques­tion to ren­der in the most com­pelling man­ner the ten­der­ness of the rela­tion­ship between Jesus and the Vir­gin Mary,” and thus, between moth­er and son. Most of Freud’s obser­va­tions in his Leonar­do essay are non­sense, based on a mis­trans­la­tion into Ger­man of the word “vul­ture” for a word that actu­al­ly means “kite” (an error he lat­er found par­tic­u­lar­ly embar­rass­ing). But his dis­cus­sion of Leonar­do’s child­hood and his best, unfin­ished paint­ing may strike us with par­tic­u­lar poignan­cy.

[T]he smile which is play­ing on the lips of both women, although unmis­tak­ably the same as in the pic­ture of Mona Lisa, has lost its sin­is­ter and mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter; it express­es a calm bliss­ful­ness.… Leonardo’s child­hood was pre­cise­ly as remark­able as this pic­ture. He has had two moth­ers, the first his true moth­er, Cate­ri­na, from whom he was torn away between the age of three and five years, and a young ten­der step-moth­er, Don­na Albiera, his father’s wife. By con­nect­ing this fact of his child­hood… and con­dens­ing them into a uni­form fusion, the com­po­si­tion of Saint Anne, Mary and the Child, formed itself in him.

Per­haps Freud was right, and The Vir­gin and Child with St. Anne was tru­ly Leonar­do’s most per­son­al work, the apoth­e­o­sis of a quest to inte­grate his per­son­al­i­ty through art. What­ev­er the case, we can say, along the psy­cho­an­a­lyst, that “on becom­ing some­what engrossed in this pic­ture it sud­den­ly dawns upon the spec­ta­tor that only Leonar­do could have paint­ed this pic­ture.”

On a side note, Nerd­writer, the cre­ator of the video above, has a new book com­ing out, Escape into Mean­ing: Essays on Super­man, Pub­lic Bench­es, and Oth­er Obses­sions. You can pre-order it now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To-Do List from 1490: The Plan of a Renais­sance Man

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Made His Mag­nif­i­cent Draw­ings Using Only a Met­al Sty­lus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

At the end of World War II the Nazis burned an Aus­tri­an cas­tle full of mas­ter­pieces, includ­ing three paint­ings by Gus­tav Klimt enti­tled Phi­los­o­phy, Med­i­cine, and Jurispru­dence. Called the “Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings,” these were com­mis­sioned by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na for the ceil­ing of its Great Hall in 1900, then, upon com­ple­tion sev­en years lat­er, were deemed porno­graph­ic and nev­er exhib­it­ed. Until now, they were pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty only in black and white pho­tographs.

Thanks to cut­ting edge art restora­tion AI, the mono­chro­mat­ic images of Klimt’s Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings have been recon­struct­ed in col­or. They are now on dis­play in an online gallery of 130 paint­ings, plus a vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion of 63 of the artist’s works, all brought togeth­er by Google Arts & Cul­ture and appro­pri­ate­ly called Klimt vs. Klimt. It’s a ret­ro­spec­tive explor­ing the artist’s many con­tra­dic­tions. Was he a “schol­ar or inno­va­tor? Fem­i­nist or wom­an­iz­er? Famous artist or hum­ble crafts­man? The answer, in most cas­es, is both,” notes Google. There’s more, of course, giv­en the venue, as Art Dai­ly explains:

The exhi­bi­tion fea­tures an immer­sive Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Pock­et Gallery, which dig­i­tal­ly orga­nizes 63 of Klimt’s mas­ter­works under a sin­gle roof. Audi­ences can vir­tu­al­ly walk the halls of the gallery space at scale and zoom in on the paint­ings’ fine orna­men­ta­tion and pat­tern, char­ac­ter­is­tic of Klimt’s prac­tice, made pos­si­ble by the dig­i­ti­za­tion of his icon­ic art­works in ultra-high res­o­lu­tion.

With respect to the first pair of oppo­si­tions (that is, schol­ar or inno­va­tor?), Klimt was assured­ly both, though not exact­ly at the same time. Trained as an archi­tec­tur­al painter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Arts in Vien­na, his ear­ly work is solid­ly aca­d­e­m­ic — real­ist, for­mal, clas­si­cal and con­ser­v­a­tive.

So con­ser­v­a­tive an artist was Klimt, in fact, he was elect­ed an hon­orary mem­ber of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na, and in 1888 Klimt received the Gold­en Order of Mer­it from Aus­tri­an Emper­or Franz Josef I … before, that is, his work was judged obscene — a judg­ment that did sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle to hin­der Klimt’s career.

At the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, Klimt abrupt­ly shift­ed focus, par­tic­u­lar­ly after the death of his artist broth­er Ernst and his father, a gold engraver, in 1892. He became a found­ing mem­ber of the Vien­na Seces­sion move­ment, pro­duc­ing some of his most famous Sym­bol­ist works dur­ing his “Gold­en Phase,” when many of his works con­tained real gold leaf in trib­ute not only to his father but to the Byzan­tine art he saw dur­ing vis­its to Venice and Raven­na. This was the height of Klimt’s career, when he pro­duced such works as The Kiss, The Embrace, and Ful­fill­ment and Expec­ta­tion, “prob­a­bly the ulti­mate stage of my devel­op­ment of orna­ment,” he said.

In many ways, Klimt embod­ied con­tra­dic­tion. An admir­er of soci­ety and lux­u­ry, he also spurned com­pa­ny, turned away all vis­i­tors, and spend­ing so much time paint­ing land­scapes dur­ing sum­mer hol­i­days that locals called him Wald­schrat, “for­est demon.” Renowned for his sex­u­al adven­tur­ous­ness (he sup­pos­ed­ly fathered 14 chil­dren), Klimt was also an intense­ly focused and iso­lat­ed indi­vid­ual. In a piece enti­tled “Com­men­tary on a Non-Exis­tent Self-Por­trait,” he writes:

I have nev­er paint­ed a self-por­trait. I am less inter­est­ed in myself as a sub­ject for a paint­ing than I am in oth­er peo­ple, above all women… There is noth­ing spe­cial about me. I am a painter who paints day and day from morn­ing to night… Who­ev­er wants to know some­thing about me… ought to look care­ful­ly at my pic­tures.

Look care­ful­ly at an online gallery of Klimt’s works here. And see the immer­sive Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty gallery here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Gus­tav Klimt’s Mas­ter­pieces Destroyed Dur­ing World War II Get Recre­at­ed with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Gus­tav Klimt’s Icon­ic Paint­ing The Kiss: An Intro­duc­tion to Aus­tri­an Painter’s Gold­en, Erot­ic Mas­ter­piece (1908)

Gus­tav Klimt’s Haunt­ing Paint­ings Get Re-Cre­at­ed in Pho­tographs, Fea­tur­ing Live Mod­els, Ornate Props & Real Gold

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Not long ago I stayed in a hotel by the train sta­tion of a small Kore­an city. In the room hung a repro­duc­tion of Gus­tav Klimt’s Die Umar­mung, or The Embrace. This at first struck me as just anoth­er piece of cul­tur­al­ly incon­gru­ous décor — a phe­nom­e­non hard­ly unknown in this coun­try — but then I real­ized that its sen­si­bil­i­ty was­n’t entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate. For the room was in what belonged, broad­ly speak­ing, to the cat­e­go­ry of South Kore­a’s “love hotels,” and Klimt, as Great Art Explained cre­ator James Payne puts it, “placed sex­u­al­i­ty at the fore­front of his work.” The artist had that in com­mon with Sig­mund Freud, his fel­low denizen of fin de siè­cle Vien­na.

With paint­ings like Die Umar­mung, Klimt pushed the bound­aries of what Freud called “the mis­un­der­stood and much-maligned erot­ic.” Payne cites those very words in his new video on Klimt’s much bet­ter-known work Der Kuss, or The Kiss.

Com­plet­ed in 1908, the paint­ing shows both the artist’s pen­chant for “alle­go­ry and sym­bol­ism” car­ried over from his younger days, as well as his mature abil­i­ty to trans­form alle­go­ry and sym­bol­ism “into a new lan­guage that was more overt­ly sex­u­al and more dis­turb­ing.” For these and oth­er rea­sons — its near­ly life-size dimen­sions, its lib­er­al use of actu­al gold — The Kiss has for more than a cen­tu­ry been an un-ignor­able work of art, even “an icon for the post-reli­gious age.”

As in his oth­er fif­teen-minute videos, Payne man­ages to dis­cuss both tech­nique and con­text. Here the “delib­er­ate con­trast between the real­is­ti­cal­ly ren­dered flesh and the two-dimen­sion­al abstract orna­men­ta­tion cre­ates an effect almost like pho­to mon­tage.” The fig­ures’ clothes offer “a visu­al metaphor for the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal expres­sion of erot­ic love,” and their close fram­ing echoes Japan­ese wood­block prints, from which Payne notes that Klimt (like Van Gogh) drew great inspi­ra­tion. He also traces the aes­thet­ic roots of The Kiss through Edvard’s Munch’s epony­mous paint­ing, and Auguste Rod­in’s even ear­li­er sculp­ture. “Once con­sid­ered porno­graph­ic and deviant,” Klimt’s was lat­er “put on dis­play in one of the impe­r­i­al palaces” — and even today, on the oth­er side of the world and in a much hum­bler con­text, it retains its roman­tic pow­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tav Klimt’s Haunt­ing Paint­ings Get Re-Cre­at­ed in Pho­tographs, Fea­tur­ing Live Mod­els, Ornate Props & Real Gold

Art His­to­ry School: Learn About the Art & Lives of Toulouse-Lautrec, Gus­tav Klimt, Frances Bacon, Edvard Munch & Many More

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

New Dig­i­tal Archive Will Fea­ture the Com­plete Works of Egon Schiele: Start with 419 Paint­ings, Draw­ings & Sculp­tures

Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free Online

The Sto­ry Behind Rodin’s The Kiss

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.