Klimt - Portrait of Emilie Flöge

Emilie Louise Flöge, Gustav Klimt's secret muse, inspired his greatest masterpieces, including The Kiss.

Iconic canvas by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), executed in 1908, but not the only one, because from 1891, the date of the beginning of their relationship, he would make several other portraits of her and series of photographs, extremely significant for understanding his particular art and the way he had, alchemist and Byzantine, of reinterpreting the motifs and his models to bring them all together, in his personal mythology, in this aesthetic where the bodies of the women he loved so much join the germination of plants and flowers, the great crucible of a sacralized nature.

Twelve years his junior, Emilie Flöge was a trained seamstress. With her sisters Hélène and Pauline, she created a sewing school and then founded her own fashion house. Very quickly, her natural elegance and talent as a stylist led her to success. Hélène had married Ernst, Gustav Klimt's brother, so it was easy for the latter to meet Emilie and quickly succumb to her charm. Did his ambiguous status as Hélène's brother-in-law prevent him from publicly assuming the love he had for his sister? Klimt's biographers have not decided on the nature of their relationship.

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Portrait of Emilie Flöge, 1908
Wien Museum Karlsplatz, Vienna