The Three Ages of Woman

Klimt finished this in 1905, at the height of his golden phase, the same years he was working toward The Kiss. He shows the same woman three times over. A baby held asleep against a young mother, and off to the side an old woman turned away, her head bowed and her hand across her face. Look at how the two younger figures are wrapped in bright decorative pattern while the old woman stands almost bare against the dark. In 1911 Klimt sent the painting to a big international show in Rome marking 50 years of a united Italy, where it took the gold medal. Rome kept it, and it has hung in the city's modern-art gallery since 1912.