Symbolism

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Nicknamed 'The Woman in Gold,' the portrait is covered in real gold and silver leaf, recalling the Byzantine mosaics Klimt saw in Ravenna.

Gustav Klimt · 1907

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Author

Neue Galerie, New York

The Nazis looted it from the Bloch-Bauer family; after a famous legal battle, Austria had to return it to Adele's niece in 2006.

Highlights

Facts & legends

Nicknamed 'The Woman in Gold,' the portrait is covered in real gold and silver leaf, recalling the Byzantine mosaics Klimt saw in Ravenna.
The Nazis looted it from the Bloch-Bauer family; after a famous legal battle, Austria had to return it to Adele's niece in 2006.
It then sold for about 135 million dollars — at the time one of the highest prices ever paid for a painting.
Adele was the only model Klimt painted twice, and rumors long swirled that the married woman was also his lover.
Hitler's regime renamed it 'Lady in Gold' to hide that its subject was Jewish.

Source: Wikidata

Estimated value

What it is worth today

Ronald Lauder bought Adele Bloch-Bauer I in 2006 for about $135 million — then the most expensive painting in the world; it now hangs in his Neue Galerie in New York.

More details How Klimt's four-year portrait made Adele Bloch-Bauer the Woman in Gold, then became central to a landmark restitution of Nazi-looted art.

A four-year commission

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer commissioned his wife's portrait in 1903; Klimt finished in 1907

Adele belonged to a wealthy Jewish Viennese family and participated in the city's intellectual life. The Bloch-Bauer home supported artists, musicians and political discussion. Numerous drawings record Klimt's search for face, hands and costume.

She was the only woman he portrayed twice in finished oils. Here the body nearly vanishes into ornament while face and tense fingers remain human.

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer commissioned his wife's portrait in 1903; Klimt finished in 1907 after many studies. Adele came from a wealthy Jewish family, hosted an intellectual salon, and supported art. Neue Galerie stresses intelligence as well as sensuality: gold complicates rather than erases her presence.

Gold as splendour and enclosure

Metal leaf joins Byzantine ceremony to radical flatness

Inspired in part by Ravenna mosaics, eyes, spirals and geometric signs merge dress and background. Conventional depth collapses.

Pale skin and clasped hands resist total absorption. Luxury and vulnerability remain in the same image.

Gold is not one background. Squares, eyes, spirals, and triangles collide across dress and room. Face and hands remain flesh-like and vulnerable. Folded fingers hide Adele's deformed finger; a practical gesture becomes the pose's mysterious centre.

A wish was not a gift

Adele's 1925 request did not transfer Ferdinand's ownership

She asked her husband eventually to leave the Klimts to an Austrian gallery, but he remained their legal owner. After the 1938 annexation he fled and Nazi authorities confiscated the collection.

The portrait entered the Belvedere and became famous as the anonymous Woman in Gold, separating a Jewish sitter's name from her image.

Dress, chair, and room nearly merge. The body dissolves into decoration while the face resists. Ravenna mosaics matter, yet this is modern Vienna: a private woman becomes a secular icon without religious narrative.

Maria Altmann's case

Recovery required years of litigation and a US Supreme Court decision

Adele's niece and fellow heirs pursued five paintings. After the question of suing Austria in US courts, the parties used Austrian arbitration.

In January 2006 the panel ordered the works returned. Decades of museum possession did not erase the conditions of loss.

Nazis seized the family collection after the Anschluss. The gallery renamed the portrait Woman in Gold, concealing Adele's Jewish identity. Her request concerning a future museum gift did not remove her husband's ownership. After a long dispute, the works returned to heir Maria Altmann in 2006.

New York after Vienna

A record purchase kept the portrait publicly visible

Ronald Lauder acquired the portrait for Neue Galerie for a reported $135 million, then a record, and placed it on permanent display.

Beauty and provenance cannot be separated: gold recalls Vienna, Adele's face restores a person, and the ownership trail exposes how a national icon can rest on an erased biography.

Ronald Lauder acquired it for Neue Galerie. Price and film made it media icon, but restitution matters more than a record: museum beauty can carry property violence. Adele's full name restores what the changed title tried to erase.

Official sources