Gustav Klimt and Medicine Hardcover by Tobias G. Natter

Product Details

• Publisher: Prestel (2026-09-15)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 240 pages
• ISBN-13: 9783819500145
• Item Weight: 1729.35 grams
• Dimensions: 29.72 x 24.77 x 2.62 cm

Taking Klimt’s lost painting Medicine as a starting point, this authoritative volume examines the relationship between art, medicine, and modern thought in Vienna around 1900.

When Gustav Klimt unveiled Medicine in 1901, the work sparked outrage by challenging conventional ideas about science, progress, and the human condition, becoming one of the defining cultural controversies of its time. Withdrawn by the artist and destroyed during World War II, Medicine remains one of the most fascinating lost masterpieces of modern art. 

Through paintings, drawings, archival photographs, and restored imagery, this volume reconstructs the history, meaning, and legacy of the work while placing it within the intellectual ferment of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Essays explore the connections between art, anatomy, psychology, philosophy, evolutionary theory, and modern medical science.

Leading scholars reveal Klimt's engagement with the ideas reshaping his era, in particular microscopical cell examination, Darwinian concepts of human evolution, and the discovery of the unconscious. Reproductions of related masterpieces highlight the themes of birth and death, sexuality, consciousness and transformation.

• Documents in unprecedented detail the impact of Gustav Klimt’s painting, Medicine.
• Authors are experts in the field of art history, and on medicine and cultural studies
• Sheds light on the creative milieu of the time as well as Klimt's allegories of life
• Richly illustrated with Klimt’s artworks, essays are interspersed with plate sections
• Ideal for readers interested in the intersections of art, medicine, and philosophy

Essential reading for Klimt enthusiasts, this volume is a compelling new perspective on Klimt’s lost masterpiece and its enduring relevance.

About the Author

TOBIAS G. NATTER is an art historian, expert on Austrian art, and author of the most recent catalogue raisonné of all paintings by Gustav Klimt (2012). He served as Chief Curator at the Belvedere Museum and was Director of the Leopold Museum, both in Vienna. In 2014, he founded the Natter Fine Arts agency, which focuses on estimating the value of artworks and the development of exhibitions on “Vienna around 1900.”

Dr. Christiane Druml is a trained lawyer and bioethicist. She was Vice Rector of the Medical University of Vienna from 2011 to 2015 and has since been Director of the Josephinum – Medical History Museum Vienna. She has been chair of the Austrian Bioethics Commission since 2007 and has headed the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics at the Medical University of Vienna since 2016.

Univ.-Prof., Dr. med. Markus Müller, born in Klagenfurt, studied medicine at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1993 sub auspiciis praesidentis. He trained as a specialist in internal medicine in Austria, Sweden, and the USA. He has been Rector of the Medical University of Vienna since 2015. He has been President of the Supreme Health Council since 2018 and Vice-President of the Austrian Universities Conference since 2023.