While Klimt was still a student, Martin Gerlach commissioned him to draw allegories to finish the decoration of the stairways of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.  He was supposed to represent the history of art from ancient Egypt to Cinquecento  Florence.  It was at this time that Klimt started experimenting with symbolic ornamentation together with floral themes.
 
   This style is evident in Sculpture where he wants the viewer to think beyond the common. The purpose of a sculpture is to be looked at.  But here, Klimt paints the personification of  "Sculpture" with her living eyes gazing seductively at the beholder – it is the viewer now being perused. Irony, though it is, this closeness to life was to become one of the most distinctive qualities of Klimt's art.
 
   Scholars debate whether this Eve – alleged by the apple she is holding – was one of his first figures of the femme fatale which recurs in his later work.