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The Kiss is an oil-on-canvas painting with added gold leaf, silver and platinum by Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. It was painted at some point in 1907 and 1908, during the height of what scholars call Klimt's "Golden Period". The painting depicts a couple embracing each other, their bodies entwined in elaborate beautiful robes decorated in a style influenced by the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. Despite an ongoing controversy regarding Klimt's three-part Vienna Ceiling series, which was criticized as pornographic, The Kiss was enthusiastically received and was purchased, still unfinished, by the Austrian government when it was put on public exhibition. The painting is considered by scholars to be a masterpiece of Vienna Secession. It now hangs in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum in the Belvedere, Vienna.Painting credit: Gustav Klimt