A Sunday at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM), Vienna

A Sunday at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM), Vienna

Vienna is a city of layers: imperial grandeur, fin-de-siècle innovation, and, tucked into its palaces, the roots of modern art. Last Sunday, I set myself a small challenge: to look beyond the famous masterpieces at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) and discover something less obvious. The KHM, after all, is best known for its Rembrandts, Rubens, and Vermeers, but hidden among its rooms are quieter works that rarely get a spotlight.

With ChatGPT’s help, I arrived with a list of paintings that are often overlooked:

• Laura (Portrait of a Young Bride) by Giorgione (1506)
• Madonna with Child and Saints by Tizian (c. 1520)
• Christ and the Adulteress by Titian (c. 1520)

Finding them turned out to be its own adventure. The KHM is vast, and floor plans showing the painters/period. But one helpful supervisor directed me to the online database on their website (the link of those images above).

These “hidden” paintings are sometimes literally hidden: small canvases in side rooms or tucked between giants. After some wandering, I finally came face to face with Titian’s Christ and the Adulteress.

What struck me first was its modest size. In a museum where walls are dominated by monumental altarpieces and enormous mythological scenes, this painting felt almost intimate. Titian shows the tense moment when Christ confronts the accusers of a woman charged with adultery. The gestures are restrained, the figures clustered closely, and the emotional charge lingers in the space between them. No thunderous drama, no theatrical sky — just a quiet intensity.

And yet, the work that truly stayed with me that afternoon wasn’t even on my original list. In another gallery, I stumbled upon Titian’s portrait of Isabella d’Este (1534–36). Isabella was one of the great women of the Italian Renaissance: a Marchesa of Mantua, patron of artists, and a formidable political player. In Titian’s hands, she looks poised, direct, almost modern. Her expression is confident, her dress strikingly unconventional for the time, with golden fur and dark fabrics that set her apart from the parade of delicate brides and passive Madonnas nearby.

Maybe that’s why she caught my attention. In a museum filled with biblical dramas and mythological nudes, here was a woman portrayed not as an allegory or saint, but as herself: powerful, intelligent, and undeniably present. For me, Isabella’s portrait had more bite than the theological scene of Christ and the Adulteress.

The KHM itself deserves mention: built in the late 19th century by Emperor Franz Joseph to house the Habsburgs’ collections, it is as much a monument as the works inside. Marble staircases, gold-leaf ceilings, and Gustav Klimt’s wall paintings make the visit a feast for the eyes even before you reach the galleries.

I left that Sunday with two impressions. First, that overlooked paintings are often overlooked simply because they’re harder to find — small, side-hung, or overshadowed by scale. And second, that sometimes the most rewarding encounter isn’t the one you planned. Isabella d’Este’s gaze followed me out of the museum and into my week, a reminder that art can surprise you most when you expect it least.

What about you? Have you ever been more captivated by a “side” artwork than the famous piece you went to see?

At the end some Special Insights:

• ✨ Isabella d’Este was called the “First Lady of the Renaissance”, patron to artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.
• 🎨 Titian painted her portrait when she was in her 60s, but made her appear decades younger — Renaissance Photoshop!
• 🏛️ The Kunsthistorisches Museum opened in 1891, built to house the imperial Habsburg collections in a symmetrical pair with the Natural History Museum.