“As the art historian Emily Braun has documented, Klimt read Darwin and became fascinated with the structure of the cell… Thus, the small iconographic images on Adelle's dress are not simply decorative… they are symbols of male and female cells: rectangular sperm and ovoid eggs. …designed to match the sitter's seductive face and her full-blown reproductive capacities.”

—  Eric R. Kandel

The Age of Insight (2012)

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Eric R. Kandel photo
Eric R. Kandel 81
American neuropsychiatrist 1929

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