The many mysteries surrounding a portrait of Klimt found in Vienna

By Tonia Mastrobuoni (La Repubblica)

In 1917, Margarethe Constance Lieser was forced to pose nine times in Gustav Klimt's Viennese studio. You must in fact arm yourself with great patience when you want to have your portrait taken by the great painter of Jugendstil. The 18-year-old girl with big brown eyes is painted on an orange background, and her dress is a profusion of colors: this painting is one of Klimt's last masterpieces, commissioned by Margarethe's parents, the Lieser, a Jewish family converted to Catholicism and came from the large industrial bourgeoisie of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

At the beginning of 1918, Gustav Klimt died. And the

, which remained unfinished, was given to the family before disappearing without a trace. For a century, only a black and white photograph remained in the catalogs of art historians, a pale memory of an object linked to the tragic destiny of a family forced to flee the Nazis in the years...