The Golden Visionary

About this work

Pale and mask-like, the face is seen in profile with a single blue eye, the coolest and most direct point in the picture. Around it a mosaic cloak spreads across the surface in small squares of orange, ochre, blue and black, broken by gold spirals. The background is dark, crossed by gold swirl lines that echo the spirals in the cloak. The eye begins at that blue eye, then moves down into the mosaic and out along the swirls. Up close every square has its own colour and edge, and the variety is generous. Further back the cloak becomes a warm patchwork glow around the pale face. The mood is ceremonial and a little mysterious, like a figure stepping out of an old legend.

In his golden phase, roughly the first decade of the twentieth century, Gustav Klimt often let ornament swallow the body. In the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I of 1907, only the face, shoulders and hands are painted naturally; the rest dissolves into gold squares, eyes and spirals. Klimt had studied the Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna, where saints appear out of fields of gold tesserae. The Golden Visionary takes that idea further. It is a reimagining in gold, built on the 1.618 golden ratio with the Fibonacci grid as its frame, not a copy of any one portrait.

Give it a wall that people walk past slowly, such as a stair landing, a long corridor or the far end of a living room. Oxblood, deep green or warm grey walls draw out the orange and gold. A gilt or brushed-brass frame suits the mosaic, and a narrow black frame keeps it modern. Warm, low light works best, since cold light flattens the ochre. At larger sizes the individual tiles become visible from a few steps away. Three portraits from The Gilded Reverie belong together: The Solar Sovereign, this one and The Threshold of Grace. At 300 dpi the file prints sharply to roughly 75 cm on the long edge.