A STUNNING gold encrusted portrait known as the “Mona Lisa of Austria” that was looted by the Nazis and returned to its rightful owner only this year has been sold for a reported $135 million (£73 million).

Gustav Klimt’s iconic portrait of his muse and alleged lover, Adele Bloch-Bauer, was bought by the billionaire cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder, for what is believed to be the highest price paid for a painting, eclipsing the $104 million for Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe in 2004.

Mr Lauder, a prolific art collector and the founder of the Neue Galerie in New York, where the painting will be displayed, refused to confirm or deny the figure. It was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, he said. “Klimt painted very few gold paintings like this. I consider it one of his greatest paintings after The Kiss,” he told The Times. “It’s an extraordinarily personal painting. You can feel the emotion of the artist looking at it. It’s very special, a very unique type of work.”

The portrait was for years the focus of a bitter restitution battle between the Austrian Government and the niece of its subject, who argued that the Nazis seized it illegally.

Bloch-Bauer died in 1925 of meningitis and in her will requested that the painting and four other Klimts be left to Austria after her husband’s death. But he fled when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, leaving his possessions behind.

The Nazis seized his collection, placed three of the Klimts in the Belvedere Palace gallery in Vienna, and sold off the rest. The portrait has hung there for most of the last 60 years, alongside The Kiss.

Before dying in exile in Switzerland after the end of the war, Herr Bloch-Bauer drafted a new will, leaving his entire estate to his brother’s children: Robert, Luise and Maria.

At the end of the war, the three heirs began their battle to regain their possessions. Much of the artwork had been divided up among top Nazis, including Hitler and Goering.

Some of the lost items were recovered but Austrian authorities ruled that the Klimts should remain in Austria, citing Adele’s will. The family’s case stalled until 1998, when a journalist tracked down her original will, which expressed a wish, not a requirement, that the Klimts be given to Austria.

By then, Maria Altmann was the only surviving heir. She sued the Austrian Government for the return of the paintings in 2000, taking the case to the US Supreme Court. In January this year, an Austrian court ruled in favour of the family.

No sooner were the paintings back, than museums and collectors lined up to bid for them. Mrs Altmann, now 90, sold them because she could not afford the insurance. She chose Mr Lauder’s offer because he had offered his help throughout the battle to recover the works. “Paintings are the last casualty of war,” he said.

The painting, which took Klimt four years to complete, evokes the Adele that her niece remembers well. “I never saw her smile,” Mrs Altmann told the New York Times.

As a child, she asked her mother about the rumours of a love affair between her aunt and the artist. “My mother said ‘How dare you ask such a thing? It was an intellectual friendship’ But I think it was possible there was a romance.”

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