Image: public domain, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Mäda Primavesi

Gustav Klimt, 1912–13

Mäda Primavesi was about nine years old when the Viennese artist Gustav Klimt painted her portrait. Her dress was made specially by Emilie Flöge, Klimt's close friend, and flowers bloom all around her.

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Did you know?

Her father Otto Primavesi was a banker and industrialist, and her parents supported Vienna's modern artists.
Mäda later remembered Klimt making many sketches of her pose, the setting and her outfit before he painted.
Look at the rug under her feet: it is decorated with flowers, birds, fish and even a dog.
She stands firmly with one hand on her hip and does not smile, looking very sure of herself.
In 1938 the Nazis took the painting from its owner in Vienna, Jenny Pulitzer Steiner; it was returned to her in 1951.
Mäda lived a long life, from 1903 to 2000.

About the artist

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was born near Vienna and spent his whole career in the city, where in 1897 he became the first president of the Vienna Secession.

He is famous for shimmering paintings full of gold leaf and ornament, above all The Kiss, and for radiant portraits of women and children.

The son of a gold engraver, he loved to paint in a long, loose smock, and spent happy summers at Lake Attersee painting gardens and landscapes.

Gustav Klimt ›

Where it is today: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Museum page