Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt

Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt is a decorative spandrel painting Klimt executed for the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, completed in 1890–1891 as part of a large commission to decorate the museum's staircase interlopers with allegorical figures representing the history of art. The year listed in the source data as 1850 is clearly erroneous — Klimt was born in 1862. The commission was an early-career opportunity of great prestige, secured by Klimt and his brother Ernst through their decorative painting company the Künstler-Compagnie. At this stage Klimt was working in a historicist academic style quite different from the Symbolist and ornamental direction he would take after founding the Vienna Secession in 1897. The two allegorical female figures personify ancient civilisations in the manner of academic allegory, wearing period-appropriate dress and carrying identifying attributes. The spandrel format demanded adaptation of the figure to an irregular architectural space — a constraint Klimt solved with considerable skill. These Kunsthistorisches Museum paintings represent the last major commission in Klimt's academic historicist phase and are significant in marking the threshold from which his Secessionist work departed.

Oil on canvas shaped for an architectural spandrel position. The figures are rendered in the smooth, highly finished academic manner of Viennese historicism — warm flesh tones, carefully described costume details, and controlled tonal modelling. The academic style is markedly different from Klimt's post-1897 work, showing no ornamental flatness or gold surface decoration.