L'attesa

This is a working drawing, life size, made so that other people could build the thing it shows. Between 1910 and 1911 Klimt produced nine such cartoons for the dining room of a house the Belgian financier Adolphe Stoclet was putting up in Brussels. The Wiener Werkstatte then translated them into marble, enamel, coral, gold and silver, and Klimt wrote instructions to the mosaicists straight onto the paper, telling them which material was to go where. This panel is the dancer, standing in profile with one arm raised against a field of spirals. The cartoons themselves are in Vienna, at the museum of applied arts, back on show after several years of conservation work. The room in Brussels they were drawn for has been in private hands and closed to visitors since it was finished in 1911.