Gold Coin
The Kiss

Women may have dominated the work of Gustav Klimt, but his most famous painting also features a man. Many experts believe the man in The Kiss is Klimt himself and that the woman he is kissing is Emile Flöge, Klimt’s partner in real life. Whether or not that is the case, like the Mona Lisa in Paris, The Kiss still has the power to make people from all over the world flock to see it. No other work of Klimt’s could provide a more fitting climax to the Austrian Mint’s Klimt and his Women series, which began in 2012 as a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Viennese master’s birth and is now drawing to a close.

All good Romances end with a kiss

Painted in 1908-09, The Kiss is on permanent display at the Belvedere palace and museum in Vienna. One of the world’s most iconic paintings, The Kiss opens up manifold associations of love, happiness and hope, yet it is Klimt’s 1902 portrait of Emilie Flöge which experts often consider his best portrait of a woman, and which forms the centre piece of the coin’s obverse. The artist himself was of the opinion that no painting could ever convey the charm of the real Emilie, who was the most important of the many women in Klimt’s life.