AI recreates "Medicine

Vienna General Hospital breathes new life into Klimt

The image that the university once didn't want has now been reclaimed to some extent with the help of AI(Bild: Medizinische Universität Wien/APA-Fotoservice/Schedl)

A giant reproduction of the lost painting "Medicine" created by KI is now emblazoned on a façade of the Medical University on Alsergrund. In several respects, Vienna is putting inglorious corners of its own past right. Whether Klimt would have been pleased with it is questionable.

Vienna has now made amends for its own history by unveiling a monumental digital reconstruction of Gustav Klimt's "Medicine" on the façade of the new Anna Spiegel research building at the MedUni Vienna campus of the General Hospital on Alsergrund - not only one of his most brilliant works, but also a memorial due to its history.

Rejected, looted, burned
Klimt originally painted "Medicine", which was over four meters high, together with "Philosophy" and "Jurisprudence" around 1900 for the then new University of Vienna on the Ring, which ultimately rejected it as scandalous. Private collectors were only too happy to step in and buy the paintings from Klimt. However, they were eventually stolen by the Nazis and stashed away in Immendorf Castle in Lower Austria, which they presumably blew up and set on fire themselves in the final days of the war.

The reproduction can be found on the side façade of the new research building.(Bild: Medizinische Universität Wien/APA-Fotoservice/Schedl)

Mayor Michael Ludwig with MedUni Rector Markus Müller and Belvedere Director Stella Rollig(Bild: Medizinische Universität Wien/APA-Fotoservice/Schedl)

Death and heavily pregnant women had nothing to do with medicine according to the Viennese university professors around 1900.(Bild: APA/EVA MANHART)

The picture at the ceremonial unveiling(Bild: Medizinische Universität Wien/APA-Fotoservice/Schedl)

The Klimt paintings, along with countless other works of art brought to Immendorf, were probably destroyed in the flames, but are officially considered lost. All that remained of Klimt's three paintings were black and white photographs and preliminary sketches - until the development of artificial intelligence and corresponding assistance from the Google Group. With human assistance from experts at the Belvedere, computers reconstructed what the painting might have looked like.

Mayor Michael Ludwig sees the "revival" of the painting as exemplary for Vienna - by combining tradition and innovation as well as art and science. It is difficult to say whether Klimt himself would have been pleased with the reconstruction, and it is not just a question of whether the painting actually looked like this: After the disdainful rebuff from the university, he never again accepted commissions from the public sector.