Gustav Klimt’s Kiss is world-famous, the era “Vienna around 1900” legendary, the Biedermeier collection a jewel: The Belvedere Companion Guide offers a comprehensive overview of eight hundred years of Austrian art. Over one hundred works from the permanent collection—from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century—are described and explained vividly in this book. Short introductions to the periods of art history provide in-depth information and are accompanied by biographies of the most important artists in the collection—from Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, the creator of the “Character Heads,” to Egon Schiele, whose portraits have lost none of their original intensity.