Portrait found in gallery’s walls verified as missing Klimt
Art experts have confirmed that a painting discovered hidden inside an Italian art gallery’s walls last month is Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady,” which was stolen from the gallery nearly 23 years ago.
The authentication of the painting announced Friday solved one of the art world’s enduring mysteries - where did the missing work end up? - but left several questions unanswered, including who had taken it and whether it ever left the museum’s property.
A gardener at the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery in the northern city of Piacenza
who was clearing away ivy noticed a small panel door on a wall outside and opened it. Inside the space, he found a plastic bag containing a painting that appeared to be the missing masterpiece.
“It’s with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic,” Piacenza Prosecutor Ornella Chicca told reporters Friday while two police officers stood on either side of an easel bearing the recovered painting.
“Portrait of a Lady” depicts a young woman sensually glancing over her shoulder against a dreamy moss green background. Klimt finished the painting in 1917, the year before he died. The Ricci Oddi gallery acquired it in 1925 and reported it missing in February 1997.
Since the gardener’s discovery on Dec. 10, the canvas had been kept in a vault of a local branch of Italy’s central bank while experts used infrared radiation and other non-invasive techniques to determine if it was the original “Portrait of a Lady.”
Experts said the painting was in remarkably good condition. One of the few signs of damage was a scratch near the edge of the canvas that may have resulted “from a clumsy effort to remove the portrait from its frame,” said Anna Selleri, an art restorer from the National Gallery in Bologna.
The experts who did the verification work found persuasive evidence in the work of their peers more than two decades ago.