Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze

Gustav Klimt's amazing Beethoven frieze of 1902 is inspired by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Below is the striking part: the left half of the middle wall. That's not Beethoven in the middle; it's Typhon the giant. He is said to be buried underneath Mount Etna; or maybe the island of Ischia (accounts vary).

Denounced by many as pornography when it was first exhibited (it was the pubic hair that did it), Klimt wanted here to evoke the life and death passions and sexuality imbued in Beethoven's music. That's the three Gorgons of Greek myth on the left (with their uglier cousins Illness, Madness and Death behind them). Lolling around on the right are Lasciviousness, Wantonness and Intemperance. You have to look elsewhere, to the final panel, to find The Ode to Joy and the triumph of the arts over death. Below is the complete middle wall.

So shocking was this work, that it did not go on public display again until 1986! The Beethovenfries is in the Secessionsgebäude (Secession Building) in Vienna.