Portrait of a Lady

Gustav Klimt · 1910s

Portrait of a Lady - Gustav Klimt

Under this Klimt lady hides another, lost woman. The painting itself vanished in 1997, and was found 22 years later by gardeners, in a bag inside the museum's own wall.

The story behind the painting

Gustav Klimt painted this oil on canvas between 1916 and 1917. In 1996, X-ray analysis showed that it was painted over Klimt's lost work Portrait of a Young Lady, in a hat and with a scarf, which had disappeared in 1917. The earlier portrait showed a woman with whom Klimt is believed to have had a love affair. After she died suddenly, he painted over the work. So the face we see sits on top of another face, one Klimt chose to cover. The Galleria Ricci Oddi in Piacenza acquired the painting in 1925.

What to look for

The canvas measures 60 by 55 cm and shows a female figure painted in an unusually lively, expressionistic style. Wikidata dates it simply to the 1910s. That liveliness is the thing to look at: a late Klimt, loose and energetic rather than gilded and ornamental. Knowing what the X-rays found changes the experience. Beneath the visible lady is a younger woman in a hat and scarf, invisible to the eye but recorded by science, and the two portraits share one surface. The sources do not identify either woman by name.

Meaning and intent

The overpainting turns the picture into a quiet story of grief or of erasure. The source says only that the first woman died suddenly and that Klimt then painted over her portrait, so any further reading is ours to make. Still, it is hard not to feel that the new lady carries the memory of the old one. The painting is both a portrait and a covering, a work that hides as much as it shows, which may be why its later fate, disappearing and reappearing, seems so fitting.

Legacy

The painting was believed stolen on 22 February 1997, during renovation, shortly before a special exhibition. Its frame was found on the roof by a skylight too small for the canvas to pass through. In April 1997 police found a high-quality forgery at Ventimiglia, addressed to former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, and the theft may have been staged to cover an earlier swap. In December 2019, gardeners clearing ivy found a bag in a recess of the gallery's outer wall. The painting was confirmed authentic the next month, shown in Rome from October 2021, and returned to Piacenza. The theft remains unsolved.

Did you know?

Wikipedia · Wikidata

About the artist

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

woman · portrait

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