Klimt's Tree of Life
The Tree of Life is Gustav Klimt's golden design of a swirling, spiraling tree, made around 1905 to 1911 for the dining room of a private mansion in Brussels, the Stoclet Palace. It is one of his most copied images, even though it was never a painting on canvas.
You have seen it on posters, mugs and phone cases. Almost no one has seen the real thing.
Here is what it actually is, what the branches mean, and the dark detail hiding in the gold.
The work at a glance
Artist: Gustav Klimt.
Date: about 1905 to 1911.
What: a design for a mosaic wall frieze.
Where: the Stoclet Palace, Brussels.
Famous for: its spiraling golden branches.
It was never a painting
This trips most people up. The Tree of Life is not an oil painting.
It is a full size design Klimt drew for a mosaic, which craftsmen then built into a wall out of marble, enamel, coral and gold. The colorful version you buy on a poster is his preparatory study, now kept in a museum in Vienna.
What the branches mean
The tree of life is an ancient symbol found across many cultures, a link between the earth, the heavens and the world below.
Klimt twisted his branches into tight spirals that seem to grow and curl without end, an image of life as one endless, tangled cycle. The gold turns it from decoration into something closer to a religious icon.
The figures beside the tree
The tree does not stand alone. In the full frieze it is flanked by two figures: a dancer called The Expectation, and a couple locked in The Embrace, which directly echoes The Kiss.
So the tree sits between longing and union, the two poles of Klimt's whole art.
The black bird people never notice
Tucked among the glittering branches sits a single black bird, a rook.
In folklore the rook is an omen of death. Klimt placed it quietly in the middle of all that gold, a small reminder that the tree of life is also the tree that ends. Artists love to bury meaning like this, as in these secrets in famous paintings.
The room you cannot enter
The original mosaic still covers the dining room wall of the Stoclet Palace in Brussels.
The house is privately owned and almost never open. It is a protected world heritage site that the public has essentially never been allowed to visit. The most shared tree in art lives behind a locked door.
FAQ about the Tree of Life
Who made it? Gustav Klimt, around 1905 to 1911.
Is it a painting? No. It is a design for a mosaic frieze.
Where is it? The Stoclet Palace, Brussels, a private home.
What does it mean? An ancient symbol linking earth, heaven and the world below.
Can I see it in person? Almost never. The palace is private.
A masterpiece behind a locked door
The Tree of Life hangs in a dining room almost no one is allowed to enter.
The image on a million tote bags lives, in the original, behind the doors of a Brussels mansion the public has never really seen. The man who designed it is Gustav Klimt.