One of the Greatest Gustav Klimt Collections Was Destroyed in a WWII Castle Fire
Last week, a gardener at the Ricci Oddi modern art gallery in Piacenza, Italy, was tackling some overgrown ivy when he discovered a hidden metal panel in the building’s exterior wall.
He opened it and found something very unexpected inside—a black bag containing a painting believed to be Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady” that had been stolen from the same gallery 23 years earlier.
Once this find is authenticated—if it is indeed the painting that was removed from the gallery via skylight on Feb. 18, 1997—it will be a big win for Klimt’s oeuvre. While the legacy of the Austrian modernist painter has only grown since his death in 1918 (today, his “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” has achieved nearly universal recognition), his body of work took a significant hit during World War II.