A 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt, known as the "Mona Lisa of Austria," has been purchased by cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for 135 million U.S. dollars, becoming the world's most expensive painting. The highest price previously paid was $104 million for Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe in 2004.
Lauder is a lifelong collector; he's also heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune.
For purchasing the painting at the enormous price of U.S.$ 135 million, Lauder said, "This was not a question of money. This was a question of something so special. This piece is priceless."
Klimt painted Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1907. The daughter of a Jewish sugar magnate, she was rumored to be the artist's lover.
In 1938, when the Nazis invaded Austria, the painting was looted and only returned to its rightful owners this year.
When an arbitration court in Vienna ruled this January that Vienna's state-owned Belvedere Gallery must return five Klimt paintings to Maria Altmann, Bauer-Bloch's last surviving heir now living in California , restitution experts around the world reacted with joy and disbelief. The case of Altmann vs the Republic of Austria was a highly publicised and bitter legal battle which intrigued the art world for more than seven years.
Installed behind bulletproof glass, the shimmering Adele will be on display at the Neue Gallerie in New York beginning on Thursday. The painting's price tag is now as rich as its history.
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