The burning gold: Klimt, ravenna, and the secret of the mosaics that changed vienna
Imagine an October morning in 1903. Gustav Klimt, wrapped in a black frock coat despite the mild autumn, steps across the threshold of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Outside, the Italian sun gilds the pink brick walls; inside, a supernatural light engulfs him. The Byzantine mosaics—millions of gold and glass tesserae—suddenly come alive. The eyes of Empress Theodora, set in a hieratic face, seem to follow him as he advances, mouth agape. Later, in a letter to Emilie Flöge, he would write simply: "Here, gold does not shine. It burns." That day, something in him cracked. The artist who would revolutionize Vienna had just found his raw material—not in the workshops of the Secession, but in the sacred walls of a forgotten city.
By Artedusa
••12 min readWhy Ravenna? Why did these sixth-century mosaics, frozen in their imperial glory, ignite the imagination of a Viennese painter in the throes of a creative crisis? The answer lies in a paradox: Klimt, that dandy of modernity, that seducer of the Jewish bourgeoisie, that provocateur who dared to paint nude women in the heart of the Victorian era, was desperately seeking a transcendence that fin-de-siècle Vienna could no longer offer. The mosaics of Ravenna were not mere decorations. They were machines for capturing divine light, screens onto which eternity was projected. And Klimt, the son of a goldsmith turned cursed painter, would make them something else entirely: the instrument of an aesthetic revolution where gold would cease to be sacred and become sensual, where the decorative would turn psychological, where Byzantium would meet Freud in a single golden burst.
01When gold ceases to be sacred
You must picture Vienna in 1900 to understand the shock. The city, capital of a dying empire, suffocated under the weight of its contradictions. On one side, the waltzes of Strauss and the gilded salons of the Ringstrasse; on the other, Freud’s theories on the unconscious and the worker riots rumbling in the suburbs. Klimt navigated between these two worlds. He was both the darling of wealthy Jewish patrons—like the Bloch-Bauers, who commissioned portraits worthy of Byzantine queens—and the sworn enemy of academism, that old world which rejected his "pornographic" nudes and "decadent" compositions.
It was in this context that Ravenna entered the scene. The mosaics of San Vitale were not mere images: they were surfaces where light materialized. The gold tesserae, arranged at precise angles, captured every ray and reflected it back as a diffuse, almost liquid glow. For Byzantine craftsmen, this technique was a metaphor for the divine. For Klimt, it became a revelation: what if gold could stop being a religious symbol and become a living material, capable of expressing desire, anxiety, wealth, death?
Back in Vienna, he set to work with renewed frenzy. In his studio on Josefstädter Straße, sheets of gold piled up like profane relics. He applied them not to icons, but to women’s bodies—Judith, Adele, Danaë—transforming his models into pagan idols. The result? An unprecedented alchemy. Where Byzantine mosaics immobilized their figures in hieratic eternity, Klimt made his vibrate. Look at Judith I (1901): the heroine’s hand, clenched around Holofernes’ hair, seems almost to tremble. The gold surrounding her is no longer a halo, but an aura of erotic power. The boundary between sacred and profane had just collapsed.
02The trembling hand: the technique of a sacrilege
How does one transition from Byzantine tesserae to Klimt’s gold leaf? The answer lies in a manic obsession with detail—and in a series of technical innovations that bordered on sacrilege.
Klimt began by preparing his canvases as one prepares an altar. Several layers of gesso, the fine plaster used since the Renaissance, were applied to create a smooth, almost mineral surface. Then came the bolus, a reddish clay that would serve as a base for the gold leaf. This was where his genius—and his transgression—lay. Byzantine mosaicists used gold to reflect divine light; Klimt used it to create textures. In The Kiss (1907–1908), the lovers’ robes are not merely gilded: they are sculpted. Beneath the gold leaf, the gesso had been molded into geometric patterns, giving the impression that the figures emerged from a wall of precious metal.
But pure gold was not enough. Klimt mixed techniques with an audacity that scandalized purists. In Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), he layered gold leaf over silver leaf—this last, oxidized by time, had turned black, creating a striking contrast with the golden highlights. X-rays even reveal a hidden portrait beneath the surface: an earlier version of Adele, abandoned, as if Klimt had hesitated before transforming her into an icon. This layering of materials—gold, silver, paint, gesso—gave the work a paradoxical depth. Gold, traditionally associated with surface and dazzle, became here a veil that concealed as much as it revealed.
And then there were the motifs. Klimt drew from an infinite repertoire: Celtic spirals, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Japanese kimonos. But it was Ravenna that offered him his definitive grammar. The concentric circles of The Tree of Life (1905–1909) recall the halos of Byzantine saints; the interlocking rectangles of Adele’s dress evoke the mosaics of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Yet where the craftsmen of Ravenna repeated religious symbols, Klimt invented a new mythology. His patterns did not tell sacred stories, but intimate dramas: possession (Judith), ecstasy (Danaë), melancholy (Adele).
03Adele, or the Jewish empress of Vienna
Among all the women Klimt transformed into golden goddesses, Adele Bloch-Bauer holds a special place. She was neither a biblical heroine nor an allegory, but a Jewish bourgeois woman from Vienna, wife of a sugar magnate. Yet in the portrait Klimt painted of her in 1907, she became something else: a reincarnated Byzantine empress, a modern Queen of Sheba, an enigma.
Look at her. Her dress, woven with gold and silver, seems made of thousands of tesserae. Her hands, crossed over her belly, recall those of Byzantine saints—but their position also suggests pregnancy, or perhaps an offering. Her eyes, barely visible beneath heavy lids, fix a point outside the frame, as if she contemplated a fate we cannot see. And then there is that unsettling detail: in the patterns of her dress, Klimt embedded tiny eyes, as if the fabric itself were watching her.
Why Adele? Why this woman, rather than another, inspired one of the most expensive works in art history (sold for $135 million in 2006)? The answer may lie in what she represented: a perfect synthesis of fin-de-siècle Vienna’s contradictions. Jewish in an increasingly antisemitic city, wealthy in a declining empire, cultured in a society that scorned female intellect. Klimt, by covering her in gold, did not sanctify her—he protected her. The gold became armor, a shield against hostile gazes.
But there is more. Adele was no madonna. She was a woman of flesh, with her desires and weaknesses. In a letter to her husband, she admitted being "deeply moved" by the portrait, but also "a little frightened" by her own reflection. Klimt, for his part, did not judge. He transformed. And that is where his genius lay: he took an ordinary woman and made her a legend, without ever erasing her humanity.
04Gold and flesh: when Klimt defies Freud
Vienna in 1900 was a city obsessed with sex—and terrified by it. Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams; Schnitzler wrote La Ronde; and Klimt painted nude women who seemed to emerge straight from Viennese nightmares. Judith, Danaë, Hope: these canvases were not mere nudes. They were manifestos.
Take Danaë (1907–1908). In Greek mythology, Danaë is locked in a tower by her father, who fears a prophecy foretelling his death by his grandson. Zeus, to seduce her, transforms into a shower of gold. In Klimt’s version, the scene becomes an allegory of female desire. Danaë is not a victim: she offers herself, legs spread, eyes half-closed, while the golden rain—painted in thick, almost sculptural strokes—flows between her thighs. The painting caused a scandal. Some saw it as an apologia for masturbation, a gratuitous provocation. In reality, Klimt was exploring something far more subversive: the idea that female desire could be both sacred and bestial, divine and carnal.
This ambiguity lies at the heart of his work. In Judith, the biblical heroine holds Holofernes’ head like a trophy—but her expression is ecstatic, almost orgasmic. In Hope I (1903), a pregnant woman, naked and vulnerable, stares at the viewer with a mix of defiance and resignation. These women are neither saints nor whores. They are both at once.
Freud, who knew Klimt, might have seen in these paintings a perfect illustration of his theory of the libido. But Klimt did not need psychoanalysis to understand the power of eroticism. He felt it in his flesh. His models—often friends, lovers, or even prostitutes—posed for him in stances that blended grace and lasciviousness. And the gold, that material he had stolen from Byzantine churches, served to magnify them, to render them both desirable and untouchable.
05The last gleam: when gold fades
In 1918, Klimt died, carried off by the Spanish flu. He left behind dozens of unfinished works, including The Bride, a canvas where a naked woman, surrounded by ghostly silhouettes, seems to await a marriage that will never happen. It was as if, in his final years, gold had ceased to fascinate him. His paintings became more colorful, more expressive. The Virgin (1913), with its deep blues and greens, marked a turning point. The gold was gone.
Why this renunciation? Perhaps Klimt had exhausted gold’s possibilities. Or perhaps he sensed that gold, that symbol of wealth and power, no longer had a place in a world that had just plunged into war. Vienna in 1918 was no longer the capital of an empire, but a city in ruins. The Bloch-Bauers, his patrons, had fled Nazi persecution. The mosaics of Ravenna, for their part, still shone, indifferent to time.
Today, when we contemplate The Kiss at the Belvedere or Adele at the Neue Galerie, one thing strikes us: Klimt’s gold has not aged. It still gleams, intact, as if time had no hold on it. Yet beneath this dazzling surface, something degrades. The silver leaf beneath the paint slowly blackens. The once-sharp patterns blur. The gold, which was meant to be eternal, begins to crack.
Perhaps this slow degradation holds Klimt’s true lesson. Gold, whether Byzantine or Viennese, is never more than an illusion. A mirage of permanence in a changing world. The mosaics of Ravenna have endured for centuries; Klimt’s canvases, by contrast, are snapshots of an era that no longer exists. And yet, they continue to speak to us. Because they capture something universal: desire, fear, the ephemeral beauty of things.
06Ravenna today: walking in Klimt’s footsteps
If you want to understand Klimt, you must go to Ravenna. Not just to see the mosaics, but to feel the atmosphere that seized him that October day in 1903.
Begin, of course, with San Vitale. Sit before the portrait of Empress Theodora, that former courtesan turned empress, whose eyes seem to follow you across the centuries. Notice how the gold around her grows denser, brighter—as if the light emanated from her rather than from outside. It was this technique that Klimt would adopt, only to subvert it: in his work, gold did not come from God, but from desire.
Then go to Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. The processions of saints and martyrs, lined up along the walls, will give you an idea of Byzantine rigor. Klimt, for his part, shattered this symmetry. His figures did not march in ranks: they danced, embraced, undressed.
Finally, make a detour to the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. The vault, studded with golden stars against a night-blue background, is one of the most beautiful things you will ever see. It was here, perhaps, that Klimt understood how gold could be both celestial and intimate, monumental and fragile.
On your way out, stop at a café in Piazza del Popolo. Order an espresso and watch the tourists photographing the mosaics. Klimt did not take photos. He carried Ravenna within him, like a fever. And when he returned to Vienna, he painted. Not copies, but reinventions. Mosaics that burned, bled, desired.
07The legacy: when gold becomes pop
Today, Klimt is everywhere. On mugs, cushions, tattoos. The Kiss is reproduced endlessly, reduced to a romantic cliché. Yet behind this trivialization, something endures.
Look at Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn (1962). The star, covered in gold leaf, seems to float in a depthless space, like a Byzantine icon. Warhol, who knew Klimt, understood something essential: gold is not just beautiful. It is a weapon. A way to transform a person—or a star—into legend.
Or think of Alexander McQueen, whose "Sarabande" collection (2007) drew directly from Klimt’s motifs. The dresses, embroidered with gold thread and pearls, seemed to step straight out of a Belvedere painting. McQueen, like Klimt, knew that fashion was not just about fabric, but about power.
Even in cinema, Klimt’s influence persists. Woman in Gold (2015), starring Helen Mirren, tells the true story of Maria Altmann, who fought to reclaim her aunt Adele’s portrait, stolen by the Nazis. The film is an ode to resilience, but also a tribute to Klimt’s gold—a metal that, far from being superficial, carries within it centuries of history, desire, and pain.
So the next time you see The Kiss on a poster, remember: it is not just an image. It is a relic. A fragment of a vanished Vienna, where gold still burned, where art dared to defy conventions, where a woman like Adele Bloch-Bauer could become an empress, if only for the duration of a portrait.
And if you listen closely, perhaps you will hear, beneath the rustling of gold leaf, Klimt’s muffled laughter. He knew, better than anyone, that beauty is always a form of sacrilege.