Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence
Creator: Klimt, Gustav, 1862-1918
Date: 1903
Date destroyed or lost: 1945
Nationality: Austrian
Medium: oil on canvas
Object dimensions: 430 x 300 cm
Former repository: Collection of Koloman Moser
Circumstances of destruction or loss: Jurisprudence and its companion canvases, Philosophy and Medicine, were shown together in 1943 at the Exhibition Hall Friedrichstrasse in Vienna in commemoration of eightieth anniversary of the artist’s birth. Immediately following the show all three paintings were removed to the Schloss Immendorf in Lower Austria for safekeeping where they were destroyed when the castle was burned by retreating SS troops.
Notes: Klimt was commissioned in 1893 to decorate the ceiling of Great Hall in the University of Vienna with canvases representing the faculties of the university. When the radical canvases were displayed they were attacked as pornographic and decadent, and Klimt resigned from the commission. Jurisprudence was exhibited in the eighteenth Secession Exhibition in November of 1903, and along with the Medicine canvas, was purchased by Kalomon Moser in 1911
