The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

His mouth lands on her cheek, not on her lips. The Kiss holds back the thing it is named for. Our hand-painted reproduction, in oil on linen, keeps the square of the original and starts at $249.95. Number 11 in our 100 most famous paintings, and the peak of Klimt's gold period.

Almost nothing else in the picture is soft. Two faces, four hands and a pair of bare feet carry all the modelling, the shading that makes a shape look round. One of our Klimt painters builds everything around them, with fifteen years or more in oil.

Two faces, four hands, and the only skin in the picture

The flesh does all the work of roundness. Cheeks and knuckles turn from warm pink into a cool green shadow. Around them the surface lies flat, and nothing casts a shadow.

Her hair is the only broad patch of colour on the two figures. Deep red, with lilac and dark purple flowers set into it. Below her the flowered ground stops in a hard line under her feet.

From across the room his half of the robe reads as one warm tone, and hers reads as colour. Close up that reverses. His rectangles separate into brass and platinum. Her circles turn out to be painted in orange, pink and purple.

The gold outline reads as one shape before it reads as two people.

The gold went down before the skin was painted

The Belvedere technical record gives the order of work. Klimt drew the design in graphite, then laid brass leaf across the whole canvas. He left only the flesh, the hair and the meadow flowers bare.

So the skin is not paint on top of gold. It is the part of the canvas the gold never covered. Over the brass he set gold and platinum leaf. Then dark oil-resin glazes, transparent layers that darken the metal without hiding it. Then loose metal flakes, dropped into the glaze while it was still wet.

That last step follows maki-e, the Japanese lacquer method of dusting metal powder onto a tacky surface. He built Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I the same way in 1907, also a square. In Danaë the gold falls as rain. Here it stands as a ground, the surface the whole figure sits on.

We hold four metal tones apart in oil. Warm gold on his coat, cold silver and grey platinum in the figures, a duller glazed gold behind them.

What the X-ray found under the finished coat

Radiography at the Belvedere shows the picture Klimt painted out. The man once had a beard. His coat carried different ornament. The woman's left forearm was hidden.

Her legs were shorter, ending at the edge of his coat. He lengthened them and carried her feet to the right, over background he had already gilded.

Vienna bought the canvas at the 1908 Kunstschau before he was done, so the museum dates it c. 1907 to 1909. We paint the state hanging there now.

Her fingers and toes curl, and readings of that gesture split

Three places grip. Her fingers fold over the back of his hand. Her toes hook over the lip of the flowered ground. Her face turns away from his mouth.

One reading takes this as surrender. Another takes it as hesitation, with the meadow dropping away to nothing at her right. The museum entry does not settle it.

Either way the gesture is small and exact. Your painter works the hands and feet last, and photographs them first.

Seven square sizes, because the original is a square

The canvas in Vienna is 180 × 180 cm, height by width. All seven of our sizes hold that shape, from 41 cm to 152 cm a side.

Scale decides what the ornament does. At 41 cm a side the pattern reads as texture, so hang it where people pass close. At 91 × 91 cm and up the rectangles separate at room distance.

The Belvedere canvas is 28 cm larger on each side than our biggest square. We can paint it at the full 180 cm: tell us the measurements you want first.

One artist, from blank linen to the signature

A Klimt goes to painters who work him often, since laying out the ornament is most of the labour. No AI at any stage, and nothing printed or traced.

Metal misleads a camera both ways. We photograph your finished canvas under raking light, a lamp set almost flat to the surface, so every ridge of paint throws a shadow. We shoot from two positions. Up close you see oil standing on the weave of the linen.

The seven squares, the weeks, and inventory number 912

Three things to check in your photographs:

• 🖌️ The two robes. Rectangles in brass and platinum on his side, painted circles and flowers on hers.
• 🎨 The hands and the feet. Four fingers over the back of his hand, the toes hooked on the edge. The only modelled shapes in the canvas.
• 🖌️ The signature. GVSTAV KLIMT, with a V, at the lower right.

Ordering: pick the square, then set the gold

Pick the square on the selector above, with or without a frame. If you want the background gold warmer or cooler than the museum canvas, say so in the order notes.

Source: the Belvedere object record for inventory 912, Vienna, with its technical and restoration notes. See the museum record.