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A Gustav Klimt portrait, “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” sold for a record $236.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York after a 20-minute bidding war. The painting, which helped save its Jewish subject from the Nazis during World War II, depicts Lederer in an East Asian emperor’s cloak and was painted between 1914 and 1916. It was previously on loan to the National Gallery of Canada and is one of two Klimt full-length portraits still privately owned. The sale surpassed the previous modern art record set by Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portrait, which sold for $195 million in 2022.
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