Choosing highlights at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) feels somehow impossible. But here are my suggestions…
- The obvious but also the unusual
- From ivory birds to imperial portraits
- Book your museum tickets*
- See also:
Carnelians & Bruegels
(A gift box full of artistic delights)
The art treasures in the Kunsthistorisches Museum span millennia, and just the letter R covers such names as Rembrandt, Raphael and Rubens.
So choosing the best pieces is like finding highlights among highlights. But ask me what you should make a point of seeing, and I’d stutter and delay before coming out with these suggestions…
The Boxwood Rosary Pendant
Location: the Kunstkammer (Gallery 35)
Most art feels like magic to me, but at least I can see how you might produce a painting. But this spherical wooden pendant from the early 1500s? Nope. Magic.
You might pass this boxwood item from the early 1500s easily: it measures just 6.2 cm in diameter when shut.
Inside, you have a top half covered with two panels. These fold out to reveal a carved scene of the Passion of Jesus in the hemisphere behind. The bottom half also has its own carved scene.
It’s the detail that impresses.
For example, a morass of horses and riders stand in front of the crucifixion, some with spears that protrude out into the open space. All across just a few centimeters. Carved from wood. Without the assistance of a computer-guided lathe.
Maybe it’s easier than it looks. But to me…magic.
The Saliera
Location: the Kunstkammer (Gallery 29)
(Salt cellar (Saliera) Benvenuto Cellini 1540-1543, Paris, gold, enamel, ebony, ivory 26.3 cm x 28.5 cm x 21.5 cm; press photo © Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)
One translation for the word Kunstkammer is cabinet of wonders. And the same-named department in the Kunsthistorisches Museum is exactly that.
The work that appears on related posters and guidebooks is the Saliera: a salt and pepper set.
Well, a salt and pepper set in much the same way that Versailles is a suitable residence for a large family with a dog.
A salt and pepper set built from gold, enamel, ebony, and ivory. And filled with enough allegories, symbols and personifications to keep an art historian smiling for days.
The Ivory Phoenix
Location: the Kunstkammer (Gallery 22)
One room in that Kunstkammer has numerous ivory statuettes that make use of the material’s polished fluidity to create smooth masterpieces.
Or not quite so smooth masterpieces.
The ivory phoenix from around 1610/1620 is a flustered mass of feathers and rough texture. And so it thumbs its nose at our expectations and gives a loud “caw” in the direction of those in quiet contemplation of 17th-century artistry.
The small portrait collection
Location: Coin Collection (Galleries 1 and 2)
(The first gallery in the coin collection exhibition rooms with the portraits lining the walls; press photo © KHM-Museumsverband)
The picture galleries have their fair share of portraits (two of which count among my museum highlights). But we’ll ignore those for now and wander up to the top public floor of the museum, weaving our way around to the coin collection.
The walls of the two permanent coin galleries contain a large collection of miniature renaissance portraits, put together like the 16th-century equivalent of a Panini football sticker album.
With no name index (at least last time I looked), the fun is perusing the portraits to see who you can identify. Little squeals of delight punctuate the sedate museum ambience when you spot Leonardo da Vinci or Queen Elisabeth I, for example.
Roman gem cabinets
Location: Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Gallery 16)
Light, shadow, marble and gold might be keywords for the Roman wing of the museum. As if a scholar of chiaroscuro took charge of the exhibition architecture.
The highlight of Gallery 16 is probably the large cut onyx in a gold setting: the Gemma Augustea.
However, I prefer the cabinets of engraved gemstones that flank the walls approaching this cameo.
Only because the carnelians glitter as you pass, like family heirlooms in the trophy case of some Tolkienesque dwarven king (but without the ale stains).
Hunters in the Snow
Location: Picture Galleries (Gallery 10)
(Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30 – 1569), 1565, oak panel, 117 × 162 cm; Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery; press photo © KHM-Museumsverband)
And so let us enter, at last, the picture galleries and a who’s who of European painting history, which includes the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s famous Bruegel collection.
I’d like to claim some special artistic insight into why Hunters in the Snow is my favourite. Composition…brushstroke…motif…etc. etc. But I have none.
Quite simply, I like a good story, and every time I look at the painting, I wonder what tales those within might have to tell if they could speak. Especially the hunters themselves, shoulders slumped, and a lone fox slung over one back as poor pickings for a day’s work.
Portrait of Maximilian I
Location: Picture Galleries (Gallery 11)
The museum perhaps has better paintings, but Dürer’s 1519 portrait of Maximilian I feels like a meeting of giants.
Albrecht Dürer. The painter whose genius has held up across the centuries. Where today’s visitors storm the Albertina Museum to get a glimpse of his watercolour of a small mammal on its rare sojourns out of the archives.
And Emperor Maximilian I (1459 – 1519). One of those “proper” monarchs: “the last knight”. A man of action but well educated and literary.
Maximilian died between sitting for Dürer and the work’s completion. And there’s a layer of precognition in his face and his civilian clothes, perhaps.
Portrait of Jane Seymour
Location: Picture Galleries (Gallery 11)
(The museum’s picture galleries are full of masterpieces; press photo © KHM-Museumsverband)
Hans Holbein the Younger painted the portrait of the English queen around 1536/1537, shortly after the execution of Anne Boleyn. Seymour herself would die not long afterwards.
Again, it’s less about the skill of the artwork (though check out the rendering of the fabrics if you visit) and more about the resonance of a person, time and place.
One of the great artists of the northern Renaissance. A tragic queen. A court and land in religious turmoil and dominated by the larger-than-life character that was Henry VIII.
The picture takes us right into a Hilary Mantel novel.
The café
Location: Floor 1
Finally…not something you find in the collection catalogue, but a highlight none the less.
My image of a museum café is typically some self-service metal and plastic design, filled with the sound of Form 3A on a field trip spending their pocket money on chocolate bars and fizzy drinks.
Which is fine, frankly.
But the museum café in the Kunsthistorisches Museum enters my highlight list not because of some artfully designed cheesecake or artisan cappuccino. But because of the whole deal: the café as Gesamtkunstwerk.
The setting beneath the mighty dome of the museum features a cornucopia of marble columns, architectural decoration, and flaunted Habsburg wealth.
You don’t drink a coffee here, you indulge in it.
And that’s it for now. Just a personal opinion, and no doubt each of us would have a different selection. For broader information on visiting this wonderful museum, see my overview.