Vienna - The Art

And I can say with 100% enthusiasm and hand on heart that the art in Vienna was fabulous. We went to the Kunstshitorisches Museum for the old masters and the Belvedere for the more modern stuff (and then discovered that they also had a medieval gallery which was totally my happy place) and if I ever did go back to Vienna I think I'd spend all my time in the art galleries and the cafes.

Sadly he Kunsthstorisches Museum does not allow you to take photographs of their pictures, but you can take photographs of  the building.

Here's the outside - very imperial ....

...as is the inside, and the staircase proved to be vertigo inducing, but very grand 

The things that most caught my eye here were the C15 and C16 portraits by German artists. They didn't have quite the skill of the Flemish artists for painting cloth, but my word they could do faces and jewellery. I think portraits are my favourite form of art really. Obviously I couldn't take pictures of them, but I have some postcards that I might try to photograph and put up here another day. 

Many years ago when we visited Madrid we went to The Prado, and I developed a catchphrase that went 'Came for the Goya, stayed for the Velasquez' and a similar thing happened in The Belvedere, went for the Klimt, stayed for the Schiele. That's a bit reductive as the Klimts were of course gorgeous and there were some other fabulous pictures. There's a Finnish artist I admire greatly and they had one of the nicest picture of his I've ever seen which you can find an image of here , linked to avoid any copyright issues, although it doesn't do the colours justice. A lovey little Monet, some Munchs and a not very exciting Van Gogh. Since you could take pictures at The Belvedere here are a couple of the Klimts that they have 

had to take this one at an angle as you couldn't get near it for tourists taking pictures (Ha!)

on the other hand nobody was taking a picture of this one which I loved. I particularly liked the thing she has in her hair as it was such an obvious reference  to the hairstyles of the Spanish Royal Family portraits that Velasquez did, one of which we had seen the day before at the KHM.  

There were a couple of rooms of Expressionist pictures which I found really confrontational in some ways but at the same time they were mostly so beautiful that you couldn't help but just stand and gaze at them in awe. There was what I currently think of as an uncharacteristic Klimt 

and this one by Egon Schiele

There were several pictures by Schiele and I said to the OH  at the time 'This was one very disturbed individual'. But of that, more anon. ...