The Kiss by Gustav Klimt: meaning, object record and image rights

Artwork rights verdict

The Kiss: checked, with limits

Last reviewed10 August 2026

The artwork has a supported public-domain record in the EU and US; reuse guidance applies only to the exact Commons file recorded here.

01

The artwork

The historical composition and Klimt’s authorship are the copyright-term question.

02

This image file

The scan, photograph, download terms and any later edits require their own record.

Jurisdiction checks

European Union — economic copyrightpublic-domain term

Directive 2006/116/EC applies life plus 70 years, calculated from 1 January after the relevant event. Klimt died in 1918, so the standard term ended before 1 January 1989. National moral-rights rules remain separate.

United States — this work recordsupported public-domain record

The exact Commons record identifies the work as published before 1931 and marks it public domain in the US. Belvedere confirms its 1908 first exhibition and acquisition, and the 1908 Kunstschau catalogue is separately recorded. This is work-specific evidence, not an inference from the painting date alone.

Digital reproduction fileseparate checks remain

The artwork term does not grant permission to every scan. Use only the exact source-file record below; site terms, contract limits, trademarks and privacy can still matter.

Source file record

One exact file, not a blanket permission

Open source record ↗

Upstream

Wikimedia Commons file sourced from Google Art Project

Upstream SHA-1

a944e309232d18fa1515dea297d994756b899d65

GeMarkt derivative

/blog/art-history/klimt-the-kiss.webp

Derivative SHA-256

ed64ee6cfb5765036f0e12294ce34d7d2df802b63be15708811d9591b2344eb3

Dimensions

1800 × 1806 pixels

Rights statement

Public Domain Mark; faithful two-dimensional reproduction

Transformation

Resized to 1,800 pixels wide and converted to WebP; no crop.

Use guidance: For reuse, start from the linked Commons file page and keep a copy of its rights record. Do not substitute a Belvedere press image: those files are limited to exhibition reporting.

Practical use

• Study, quote facts about, and link to the artwork record.
• Reuse the exact recorded Commons file under its Public Domain Mark assessment, subject to checks where you use it.
• Do not treat another museum download, photograph, crop or edited composition as cleared by this record.

Evidence opened in this review

1. Belvedere collection record (object)
2. Belvedere: first exhibited and acquired in 1908 (publication)
3. Katalog der Kunstschau Wien 1908 (publication)
4. Exact Wikimedia Commons file record (file)
5. Belvedere press-image restrictions (terms)

General information, not legal advice. Re-check the source record and the law where you will use the file.

Object record

Gustav Klimt painted The Kiss in 1907–1908 and completed it in 1909. The square canvas measures 180 centimetres on each side and belongs to the Belvedere in Vienna, inventory number 912. The institution records the title as Lovers (Kiss) and confirms that the Ministry of Culture and Education acquired it for the Modern Gallery at the 1908 Kunstschau.

That purchase matters to the object’s history: the painting now treated as an effortless national icon was bought while Klimt was alive and while the work was still being completed. The Belvedere object record and its account of the 1908 presentation establish the object, date, dimensions and early public chronology.

A close look

The first thing to notice is not gold but the small amount of unpatterned body. Two faces, two hands and two pairs of feet carry nearly all the anatomical information. Everything else is pushed toward surface: rectangles run down the standing figure’s robe; circles and flowers gather over the kneeling figure; the gold ground refuses ordinary distance.

The couple do not float in a completely abstract field. Their feet reach a narrow ledge of flowers, and that ledge ends abruptly. The contrast makes the embrace feel both protected and precarious. Klimt gives the taller figure a firm vertical structure while the other body bends through a softer oval. Those patterns can suggest gendered codes familiar in turn-of-the-century design, but they also work compositionally: unlike motifs lock together without becoming identical.

Look at the hands next. One hand cups the face; another circles the neck; the kneeling figure’s fingers rest over the larger hand rather than disappearing beneath it. The pose can be read as tenderness, enclosure or both. The painting keeps that ambiguity alive instead of resolving it into a single emotion.

What The Kiss can and cannot mean

The gold often invites sacred comparisons. Klimt had seen Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, and the flat radiance does recall an icon’s separation from everyday time. Yet the painting is not simply a religious image with modern lovers substituted into it. Its flowers, textiles and bodily contact belong equally to Vienna’s decorative arts and to the intimate portrait tradition.

Claims that the couple must be Klimt and Emilie Flöge remain interpretations, not an identification established by the object record. A careful reading can say more by staying close to what is visible: two individual bodies become a single bright silhouette, but the edges between them never disappear.

Publication and rights evidence

The rights panel above does not infer US status from the 1907–1908 painting date. It joins the exact Commons file’s pre-1931 publication statement to the Belvedere’s 1908 chronology and the separately catalogued Kunstschau Wien 1908 publication. 17 U.S.C. §303 is retained in the guide because older unpublished works do not follow a simple “painted more than 95 years ago” rule.

For the EU, the standard economic term follows Directive 2006/116/EC. The file question is then checked separately under the linked Commons record and, for faithful reproductions in the EU, against DSM Article 14. Belvedere’s press download is not used: its own page restricts those files to exhibition reporting.

Where to go next

Use the Klimt rights guide for the legal framework and the other pilot records. The Klimt collection is the commercial browsing room; The Kiss product page is for formats and purchasing; the free wallpaper is a separate personal-use download path.