While Gustav Klimt insisted he was "not very good" with words, on occasion he could be extremely articulate and provocative, asserting without a hint of bashfulness that he and Velazquez were "the only two painters". There may well be some disagreement about this. But each to his own opinion, and there is no doubt about the Spanish master's influence, especially evident in Klimt's preoccupation with the 17thcentury portrait of the Infanta Maria Teresa. He studied it intently as a young man, and 20 years later returned to it, repeating the outline of the infanta's extraordinary hairstyle in the shape of a semi-circular, bejewelled panel behind the head his sitter, Fritza Riedler.
These pictures are now on display at the Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, where a lavish exhibition is devoted to Klimt's fascination with women. This fascination was ardent, lifelong and thoroughly undiscriminating, as his alleged siring of 14 illegitimate children indicates; for he was as likely to take up with a washerwoman from Prague - whose offspring he acknowledged as his own - as he was to seduce the "better-born" members of Viennese society as they flocked to him to have their portraits painted. Not that he neglected these either. Perhaps prompted by sour grapes, Alma Mahler, commenting on his affair with "that old hag Rose Friedmann", concluded spitefully: "He takes what he can find."
Klimt's portrait of this lady, however, shows her to be tall and supple and vibrant with a mature intelligence in her face, whereas Kokoschka's study of Mrs Mahler suggests a meanness of spirit, if not blatant bad-temperedness. She is ill-served, too, by multi-coloured garb, in this head-and-shoulders representation, while Frau Friedmann is elegantly gowned in shimmering, sequin-studded black with dark fur at the neckline.
Klimt belongs to that brilliant assembly of artists and scientists - Richard Strauss, Hofmannsthal, Gustav Mahler, Schnitzler, Musil and Freud - which flourished during the closing years of the Habsburg monarchy. As a founding member of the Viennese Secession, he came to prominence at an early stage. Public curiosity was immediately piqued by his imaginative adventures in allegory. He was still in his 20s when he painted his Mermaids, an appealing fantasy of dark, sinuous creatures weaving their way through moving, sparkling water.
But it was above all Klimt's Golden Period that made him famous. Spanning allegory, legend and portraiture, this opulent style reached its climax with his first painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Almost Byzantine in its extravagant use of gold, it features a breath-taking mosaic of ornamentation - squares, circles, spirals and triangles, all of it, despite its splendour, skilfully orchestrated to remain subservient to the sitter's slender figure and features.
Although this spectacular work was completed in 1907, the preparatory work went back several years, probably to 1901 when Judith I reveals a striking likeness to Bloch-Bauer. Again there is a generous application of gold, and the model is again characterised by slender features, elaborately-dressed dark hair and an ornate choker necklace wrapped tightly around the long, thin neck. But here there is a lascivious and potentially cruel aspect to the face - though nothing as malign or threatening as the frightening concept of the second Judith, which was inspired, it is believed, by Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Wilde's Salome.
During the Golden Period, allegory is expressed in monumental terms by the vast canvas devoted to The Kiss. Layers of gold, silver and oil are employed for the motifs of the great mantle that encloses the lovers. The lines of the drawing are fluid, and the shape of the woman's body is clearly discernible beneath the sumptuous wrapping, as she kneels on a flowery hilltop thrown into relief by a starry sky.
The carnal content of so much of his work sometimes militates against critical appreciation of Klimt's genuine veneration for women, but if he was labelled as "the ultimate in decadence", he was merely reflecting the ambience of the society in which he lived. However, immense respect and tenderness became obvious in his first picture of Emilie Floge.
She was 17 at the time, though the calm, serious strength of her regard suggests a maturity beyond her years - which she must certainly have needed to sustain lifelong intimacy with the painter in the teeth of his frequent philandering elsewhere. A later, full-length portrait demonstrates the same steadiness of purpose as she stands, hand on hip, in a gorgeous peacock-coloured dress, eminently suitable for a fashion designer.
It seems likely that Floge fostered Klimt's growing interest in costume, and as head of a leading Viennese fashion house, she was well placed to advise him.
In early portraits his subjects are often dressed in pale colours, perhaps the loveliest of them the tight-waisted tulle dress worn by Sonja Knips in a study known as the Symphony in Pink. This is regarded by many as the last major work of the fin-desiecle. As time passed, Klimt became bolder, introducing more and more vivid colour into the clothes his sitters wore, and into the backgrounds. His keen interest in oriental art also had increasing influence on his style, and is at its most complex in his painting of Friederike Maria Beer. Wearing a long jacket of polecat fur, turned inside-out to highlight its richly-patterned silk lining, she stands, firmly delineated in the foreground, while behind her the canvas is crowded with a host of bellicose Asian warriors derived from the decorative figures of a Chinese vase.
While the main sections of the Belvedere exhibition focus exclusively on "Klimt's Women", a second part aims to establish him in a general European artistic context with a collection of portraits by distinguished painters. These include the delicate pastels of Whistler, the flattering romanticism of Sargent, the capricious vision of Matisse and Manet, the stern imagery of Munch and a thoroughly sour and garish portrait of Trude Engel by Egon Schiele.
Those eager to investigate other areas of Klimt's talent will find plenty of examples elsewhere in the Belvedere, and also scattered about the city. They might start with his early decorative work on the important buildings on the Ringstrasse. These include the Burgtheater and the massive unsthistoriches Kunst historisches Museum, which among its countless treasures houses a particularly engaging picture by the young Klimt: painted from the stage of the Burgtheater, it shows the smart Viennese audience with a clutch of recognisable socialites, all avid to be recorded for posterity. Klimt is well represented at the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, too, while inevitably the culmination of any comprehensive pilgrimage must be the celebrated "Beethoven Frieze", which glows with vitality in a specially-designed room far below the gilded dome of the Secession House.
