Portrait of a Lady

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About Portrait of a Lady

A woman turns her head without quite meeting the viewer. Her face is carefully held, but everything around it seems to be changing. Green sweeps through the background. Violet, blue and red gather in the clothes. Dark hair frames skin that appears pale against the surrounding colour. The portrait feels immediate, yet its surface conceals an earlier image of a differently dressed young woman.

Gustav Klimt painted Ritratto di signora—Portrait of a Lady—in 1916–17. The Galleria d'Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi in Piacenza identifies it as an oil on canvas measuring 68 by 55 centimetres. The sitter is unknown. The painting belongs to Klimt's final years, when open brushwork and mobile colour had replaced much of the literal gilding and tightly enclosed pattern associated with his Golden Period.^[1]

The canvas has an extraordinary material history. Beneath the visible portrait is an earlier likeness, usually called Portrait of a Girl, which Klimt painted around 1910. He retained the face, pose and much of the background while transforming the hair, clothing and surrounding design. The earlier state survives within the present work, not as a second available painting.^[1][2]

Its public history is almost as unusual. Giuseppe Ricci Oddi acquired the work in 1925. It entered his new gallery in 1931, disappeared during exhibition preparations in 1997, and remained missing until gardeners found it in a wall recess at the museum in December 2019. Examination confirmed its identity, and it returned to public view in Piacenza. The theft has never been conclusively reconstructed.^[1][2]

At a Glance

• ArtistGustav Klimt
• Holder titleRitratto di signora
• English titlePortrait of a Lady
• Date1916–17^[1]
• MediumOil on canvas^[1]
• Dimensions68 × 55 centimetres^[1]
• Current collectionGalleria d'Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi, Piacenza^[1]
• Visible sitterUnidentified
• Underlying imageAn earlier portrait of an unidentified young woman, painted around 1910 and known from a 1918 monochrome reproduction^[1][2]
• Acquired by Giuseppe Ricci Oddi1925, from the Milan dealer Luigi Scopinich^[1]
• Stolen22 February 1997^[1][2]
• Recovered10 December 2019, in a recess in the gallery's exterior wall^[1][2]
• Returned publicly to the gallery28 November 2020^[2]
• Recent loanMy Art Museum, Seoul, 18 December 2025–22 March 2026^[4]
• Current displayBack at the Ricci Oddi in Piacenza as of 9 August 2026^[4]

A Portrait That Holds Two Moments

The painting does not merely hide a rejected sketch. It holds two substantially developed portraits on one support. The earlier image showed a young woman in Belle Époque dress and hairstyle. The later image preserves the face and general pose while changing the way the woman enters her period, her clothes and the pictorial world around her.^[1]

That distinction matters. It is tempting to speak of a lost painting and a recovered painting as though two separate canvases were involved. There is only one known physical object. The circa-1910 portrait is a former visible state now covered by the 1916–17 transformation. Its appearance can be studied through an old reproduction and technical investigation, but it cannot be taken down from beneath the later paint.

The two dates therefore describe stages rather than companion works. Around 1910, Klimt completed enough of the first likeness for it to be photographed and circulated. Six or seven years later, he returned to the same canvas. The visible Portrait of a Lady is the result of that return.^[1][2]

This makes looking unusually double. The viewer encounters the late portrait directly, but knowledge of the image below changes the meaning of what remains. The face is not simply the most carefully painted part. It is also the principal bridge between two pictorial identities.

“Girl” and “Lady” Are Titles, Not Identities

The difference between Portrait of a Girl and Portrait of a Lady can sound more biographical than it is. Neither title gives the sitter a name, and neither securely records what she called herself. They are descriptive labels used to distinguish the image seen around 1910 from the appearance Klimt created in 1916–17.^[1][2]

The words also reflect a change in presentation. “Girl” suits the youthful fashion recorded in the earlier reproduction; “lady” suits the more mature, modern social bearing of the later version. But that linguistic movement should not be converted into a documented ageing sequence. Six or seven years separate the painted states, yet the sitter's age in either one is unknown.

Nor does the shift prove that two different women are represented. The face and pose connect the states so closely that the museum describes the underlying and visible figures through one transformation. At the same time, physical continuity of face is not a legal or genealogical identification. Without a name or independent biographical record, it remains possible to speak confidently about the image while remaining cautious about the person.

The Italian word signora can mean lady, woman or Mrs, depending on context. In the holder title it functions as a conventional description, not a hidden surname or evidence of marital status. Translating it as Portrait of a Lady preserves the established English title without pretending to know more than the museum record supplies.

These title layers help readers avoid a common misunderstanding. “The lost portrait” was not found intact behind a removable cover, and “the lady” did not replace “the girl” through a documented change of sitter. Klimt reworked one material image so thoroughly that later cataloguing needed different labels for its successive appearances.

A Monochrome Witness to a Coloured Work

The reproduction published in 1918 is indispensable because it shows the earlier state when that state was still visible. Yet it is also a translation. Colour has been reduced to tone, paint texture to print, and the scale of a 68-by-55-centimetre canvas to the dimensions of a magazine image.^[1][2]

What survives reliably in that record is the organisation of the portrait: position of the face, direction of the head, mass of the coiffure, outline of the dress and broad relation between figure and background. Those correspondences made Claudia Maga's comparison possible.

What the reproduction cannot deliver with equal confidence is the first portrait's chromatic experience. A dark printed area might derive from several different hues, and a pale one can compress distinct surfaces into the same value. Any modern colour reconstruction would therefore combine evidence with inference.

This limitation is especially important because colour is central to the visible late portrait. It would be easy to imagine the lower image as a quieter version of the later one, but the monochrome witness cannot justify that conclusion. The two states are most securely compared through structure, clothing and silhouette.

The old image is consequently neither a poor substitute nor a perfect facsimile. It is a dated documentary object with a particular strength: it preserves enough of a vanished surface to show that Klimt's subsequent intervention was fundamental.

The Face That Remained

The woman's face occupies a small but decisive area near the upper centre. It is turned in three-quarter view, with the chin angled and the eyes directed away. Against the green, her pale skin is sharply present without becoming hard-edged.

Klimt kept this face from the earlier composition. The continuity is visible when the 1918 reproduction of Portrait of a Girl is compared with the museum painting: eyes, nose, mouth, tilt and basic placement correspond closely.^[1][2]

Preservation does not mean that every facial passage escaped alteration. A painted surface can be adjusted locally even when its design is retained, and the available institutional accounts do not supply a stroke-by-stroke map. The secure conclusion is broader: the face and pose connect the two states more strongly than the transformed costume does.

The averted eyes also deserve restraint. They may make the woman appear reserved, preoccupied or momentarily distracted, but none of those impressions identifies her thoughts. The direction of a painted gaze is evidence of composition, not a recovered confession.

Because the sitter has no secure name, the face cannot be explained through a known biography. Its persistence has to be understood pictorially. Klimt considered it usable within two different presentations of femininity, fashion and colour.

Hair and the New Silhouette

The most obvious difference between the states lies around the head and shoulders. In the earlier portrait, the young woman's fashionable hair rose and spread in a manner characteristic of the years around 1910. In the later version, Klimt reorganised that area into a darker, tighter coiffure.^[1]

The change sharpens the visible face. Dark forms close around it, making the skin appear brighter and drawing attention to the angle of the jaw. The head no longer belongs to the same sweeping Belle Époque outline.

This is not merely a correction to hairstyle. It changes the portrait's rhythm. The earlier reproduction suggests a more continuous relation between coiffure, shoulders and dress. The later work breaks that continuity into firmer accents: dark above, pale at the face, bright at the neck and clothing, green behind.

Fashion helps date the difference, but it does not explain why Klimt made it. A more contemporary appearance may have suited a later picture. That remains a practical possibility rather than a documented motive.

The later silhouette also makes the woman look less ceremonially posed. Her head seems caught in a brief turn, while the surrounding brushwork refuses to stabilise into the polished finish expected of a formal society likeness.

Clothing Remade in Colour

Klimt's most decisive intervention is the clothing. The museum describes the earlier woman as dressed in Belle Époque fashion and says that Klimt preserved the background and face while substantially changing the rest.^[1]

In the present surface, fabric does not behave like a single carefully described garment. Violet, ultramarine, red, white and darker marks accumulate in broad zones. A pale collar or scarf rises toward the jaw, while stronger hues spread below and across the shoulders.

These passages establish dress without cataloguing every seam. Some marks suggest folds, edges and layers; others remain visibly painterly. The garment is both something worn and a field through which colour moves.

That mobility is essential to the late portrait. The face retains a recognisable human centre, but the clothes resist the stillness of a conventional costume record. They appear less like evidence for a tailor than like the active substance of the painting.

It would be misleading to call the visible colours metal. The holder identifies oil on canvas, not gold leaf or a precious mixed medium.^[1] Brightness comes from pigment, contrast and handling. Klimt's departure from his better-known gilded language is not an absence of splendour; it is a different way of producing intensity.

Green as Setting and Surface

The background is dominated by green, with areas of varying temperature and density. It does not resolve into a room, garden or specific decorative wall. No furniture, horizon or architectural line locates the woman securely.

Instead, the green performs several tasks at once. It separates the face from the canvas, absorbs some edges of the clothing, and gives the surrounding colour enough openness to breathe. The figure is neither sealed into ornament nor set in a naturalistic interior.

The museum says that much of this background was retained from the earlier portrait.^[1] That survival complicates any claim that the visible environment belongs wholly to 1916–17. Klimt did not necessarily rebuild every surrounding passage when he remade the woman.

Yet retained paint can acquire a new function. The same field that once framed Belle Époque hair and dress now meets a darker head shape and a more loosely organised garment. Continuity of material does not mean continuity of effect.

The background therefore helps expose the logic of revision. Klimt did not erase everything and begin again. He selected what could remain, then changed the relationships around it.

From Golden Enclosure to Open Paint

Ricci Oddi places the portrait within Klimt's final phase, after the glittering stylisations of the Golden Period. Its account emphasises rapid-looking brushwork, greater emotional immediacy and an openness to Expressionist developments.^[1]

The phrase “rapid-looking” is important. A loose mark may appear spontaneous without proving that it was made quickly, easily or only once. This canvas in particular warns against equating visual freedom with an absence of revision: beneath its active surface lies evidence of a radical earlier conception.

Klimt's late portraits often bring bright colours, modern clothing and patterned or culturally varied environments into a more painterly relation. The Gustav Klimt Database describes the period as one in which anonymous female types, vivid dress and Asian motifs became increasingly important.^[3]

Portrait of a Lady belongs to that broad shift, but it should not be made interchangeable with other late portraits. Here the setting is comparatively spare, the crop intimate and the material history exceptional. Its distinctive problem is not a lavish motif-filled background; it is the re-formation of one image through another.

The portrait is also smaller than Klimt's full-length society commissions. At 68 by 55 centimetres, it concentrates attention on head and upper body.^[1] Its physical scale encourages closeness rather than ceremonial distance.

At that distance, open handling and preserved likeness do not contradict one another. Klimt can make the garment unstable while keeping the face legible. Late style becomes a negotiation between recognition and paint.

The Earlier Portrait of a Girl

The earlier state was considered a lost Klimt portrait because it was known from a black-and-white image published in a German periodical in 1918. That reproduction documented a young woman with the same face and pose but markedly different hair and clothes.^[1][2]

“Lost” was accurate only under the knowledge then available. No separately located canvas could be matched to the reproduction. What had disappeared from view was the earlier surface, covered by Klimt himself.

The monochrome reproduction remains valuable because it records design. It can show outline, pose, placement and tonal relationships well enough to support comparison. It cannot supply a reliable original palette or the precise material character of every passage.

Nor should the conventional title Portrait of a Girl be treated as personal identification. It distinguishes the earlier appearance from Portrait of a Lady. It does not provide a name, age in years or family history.

The young woman in the reproduction wears the cultural signals of an earlier moment. Her hairstyle and clothes make time visible around the same face. When Klimt altered them, he did not simply change decoration. He shifted how viewers would place the figure socially and chronologically.

Claudia Maga's Comparison

In 1996, Claudia Maga, a secondary-school student in Piacenza, noticed the resemblance while looking through a book about Klimt. Elements of the supposedly lost portrait seemed uncannily close to the Ricci Oddi picture.^[1][2]

Her observation deserves exact credit. She recognised a visual problem that established specialists had not resolved: two differently titled images might share the same underlying configuration.

The comparison did not by itself constitute a complete technical proof. Similar poses recur in portraiture, and reproductions can obscure differences. Maga's insight initiated a process of examination that confirmed the connection between the photographed earlier image and the museum canvas.^[1]

This distinction makes the discovery more impressive, not less. Careful looking produced a testable proposition. Material investigation then established that the resemblance arose because one portrait had been painted over by the other.

Maga did not identify the sitter. She identified continuity of image. The achievement lies in recognising face and pose through changes of hairstyle, clothing, colour and title.

What Examination Can Establish

Technical study can detect layers beneath a visible surface because some forms of radiation penetrate paint differently. It can reveal concealed contours, areas of denser material and structural relationships unavailable to ordinary viewing.

For this canvas, investigation confirmed that the later portrait was painted over the earlier one and supported the relationship first noticed through reproductions.^[1] The result is materially stronger than an argument based only on resemblance.

The evidence nevertheless has limits. An underlying composition is not made visually present in the same way as the top layer. Technical images select particular physical responses, often in monochrome, and interpretation is required to relate them to a former coloured appearance.

It is therefore safest to separate three kinds of witness. The 1918 reproduction records how the earlier portrait looked when it was still visible. The present canvas records the final material surface. Technical investigation connects the two and shows that the earlier paint remains below.

Together these sources establish transformation. They do not recover the exact date of every alteration, the full palette of the first state, the sequence of each brushstroke or Klimt's private reason for reusing the canvas.

Why Did Klimt Paint Over It?

No securely documented explanation survives. That absence has encouraged stories, especially because the work later acquired the drama of a major theft. But a mysterious later biography cannot supply a motive for an earlier studio decision.

The change may have responded to fashion, a new market, dissatisfaction with the first conception, availability of a suitable canvas or some circumstance that has left no record. None is established strongly enough to govern the interpretation.

Romantic explanations are especially risky. The unknown woman has sometimes invited narratives about love, loss or death. Without evidence, such stories turn anonymity into permission to invent.

What can be said is already substantial. Klimt judged the earlier face, pose and background worth retaining, while he considered the surrounding presentation open to major change. His intervention was selective rather than wholly destructive.

The reuse also complicates a common hierarchy between “original” and “replacement”. Both states are original acts by Klimt. The earlier portrait is not a forgery hidden below, and the later one is not an accidental cover. The visible painting is an authored transformation of an authored image.

One Face, Two Histories of Fashion

Portraiture often promises to preserve a person at one moment. This canvas does something stranger: it preserves a face while updating or reinventing much of the visible social shell around it.

Hair and dress are not trivial additions to likeness. They help a viewer place a figure within a period, imagine social position and read bodily presentation. By changing them, Klimt altered the portrait's historical address.

The first state belonged visually to the years before the First World War. The later state emerged during the conflict, when Klimt's colour and handling had also changed. The same facial configuration crosses that divide.

The canvas should not be turned into a literal allegory of wartime Europe. There is no documented programme of that kind. Yet its material sequence gives unusual clarity to a basic fact: portraits are shaped not only by the person seen but by the visual conventions through which a period makes that person visible.

In the later portrait, identity becomes paradoxical. The sitter remains nameless, but her face is remarkably persistent. We know less about who she was than about how Klimt twice organised her appearance.

Giuseppe Ricci Oddi and the 1925 Purchase

Giuseppe Ricci Oddi acquired the painting in 1925 from Luigi Scopinich, a dealer in Milan. He first displayed it in the billiard room of his family home.^[1]

This provenance begins after Klimt's death and does not reveal the commission or first owner. The available museum account does not identify who placed the work with Scopinich or what Ricci Oddi paid.

The private setting is nevertheless significant. The portrait was acquired as a finished, autonomous Klimt. Its underlying state was not yet recognised, and its value to the collector did not depend on a sensational biography.

Ricci Oddi created a gallery for his collection in Piacenza. When it opened in 1931, the Klimt hung in a room devoted to artists from outside Italy.^[1] The work thus moved from a domestic interior into a civic institution that would become central to its identity.

The gallery's name is now inseparable from the painting. This is not merely because the work is famous. Its later disappearance, survival and return all took place in relation to the building and collection Ricci Oddi established.

The Theft of 22 February 1997

The portrait vanished on 22 February 1997 while preparations were under way for an exhibition. The exact method of removal was never conclusively established.^[1][2]

That last sentence must govern the story. The circumstances produced many reported theories, claims and confessions over the following years. Their quantity does not make one of them true.

Several days after the disappearance, the painting's frame was found on the gallery roof near a skylight. The institutional story describes it as possibly placed there to mislead investigators.^[2] “Possibly” cannot be removed. The frame does not prove that the thief used the skylight, carried the canvas across the roof or acted in any particular direction.

The work's small size may make removal seem easy in retrospect, but physical possibility is not evidence of the path actually taken. Nor does exhibition preparation identify who had knowledge, access or responsibility.

The sober chronology is short. A museum object was present, then absent; its empty frame appeared in a suggestive but inconclusive location; investigation continued; the canvas did not re-enter secure public possession for almost twenty-three years.

Living With an Absence

During those years, Portrait of a Lady existed publicly through reproductions, records and memory. The loss had a special irony: a canvas already known to contain an image once considered missing had itself disappeared.

That parallel can be illuminating, but it should not collapse two kinds of absence. Klimt deliberately covered the earlier portrait during the making of the work. The 1997 theft removed the whole material object from its collection without authorisation.

The gallery could still tell the history of the picture, but viewers could no longer inspect its colour, scale or surface. Technical knowledge about the underpainting did not substitute for possession of the canvas.

Public attention often shifts towards mystery when a work is stolen. Suspects, routes and rumours can crowd out what was painted. In this case, the crime story became internationally familiar even though its central questions remained unanswered.

The object's absence also changed the meaning of preservation. Conservation was no longer only a matter of caring for paint and support. It depended first on recovering custody of the canvas itself.

Found in the Gallery Wall

On 10 December 2019, gardening work was taking place along the exterior wall of the Ricci Oddi. Workers cleared vegetation and opened a small recess closed by a metal door without a lock. Inside a plastic bag was a canvas.^[1][2]

It proved to be Portrait of a Lady. The location was astonishingly close to the collection from which the painting had vanished, but proximity does not explain the intervening years.

The discovery established where the work was found, not when it was placed there. It did not show whether the canvas had remained in the recess since 1997, returned later, travelled elsewhere or passed through other hands.

The condition of a bag and cavity can contribute to investigation, yet no retained institutional source supplies a conclusive storage timeline. The responsible account stops where the evidence stops.

The finding also altered the building's role. The gallery had been the site of loss and then, unexpectedly, the site of recovery. A recess in its exterior wall had concealed the institution's most famous absent object.

Confirmation and Return

The discovery was not treated as self-authenticating. Specialists and investigators examined the canvas in the months that followed. Tests confirmed that it was the Klimt stolen from the Ricci Oddi.^[2]

Authentication in this setting means agreement among material, visual and documentary evidence. Dimensions, composition, paint surface, known condition and the work's distinctive layered structure all belong to the identity problem. No single dramatic gesture is required when evidence converges.

The confirmed painting returned to its Piacenza home on 28 November 2020.^[2] That date marks institutional return after investigation; it should not be confused with the December 2019 discovery.

Recovery did not solve the theft. A work can be authentically restored to its collection while the people, method and duration of concealment remain uncertain.

Nor did recovery expose the earlier portrait as a separate visible object. The canvas returned in the later state known before 1997, with the circa-1910 painting still beneath it.

Back in Piacenza

The Ricci Oddi once again presents the work as a centre of its collection. Its display allows the public to return from the extraordinary biography to the modest physical scale and active painted surface of the object itself.^[1]

The painting travelled to My Art Museum in Seoul for an exhibition running from 18 December 2025 to 22 March 2026. Ricci Oddi then announced its return, with public display in Piacenza resuming on 4 April 2026 and a renewed presentation launched later that month.^[4]

These dates matter because museum access changes. The Seoul appearance is past, and the current statement is not a promise that the work will remain in one room permanently. As of 9 August 2026, it is back at the Ricci Oddi.

The return carries more than logistical significance. After two decades in which the object was known chiefly through absence, exhibition elsewhere now occurs as a controlled loan from a museum that has recovered possession.

Visitors therefore meet several times at once: the visible 1916–17 surface, the circa-1910 image below, the 1925 acquisition, the years after the 1997 theft, and the post-2019 history of return.

How to Look at the Painting

Begin with the face. Follow the turn of the head, the direction of the eyes and the contrast between pale skin and the dark forms above it. This is the part that most clearly joins the two documented states.

Then look outward towards the hair. Its tighter dark mass belongs to the later transformation and changes the silhouette recorded in the old reproduction.

Move down through the collar and dress. Notice where a mark describes fabric and where it remains an independent stroke of colour. The garment is recognisable without becoming a meticulous fashion plate.

Next, examine the green around the figure. It offers no fully described room. Ask how the same retained field can serve two different versions of the woman.

Remember the dimensions. At 68 by 55 centimetres, this is not a monumental full-length portrait. Its concentration and brushwork reward close viewing.^[1]

Finally, hold the hidden image in mind without trying to see it magically through the top layer. The earlier reproduction and technical investigation provide knowledge; the surface in front of the viewer remains the late painting Klimt chose to leave visible.

What the Double Portrait Changes

Many paintings contain adjustments. Artists move a hand, alter a contour or cover an unwanted form. Portrait of a Lady is more radical because a recognisable earlier likeness was reorganised into a later portrait while its face and pose remained active.^[1]

The Ricci Oddi describes the transformation as without equal in Klimt's known oeuvre.^[1] That does not mean no other Klimt canvas contains revision. It means that no comparable conversion of an independently documented portrait into another visible identity is currently established in the museum's account.

The case reveals that completion is not always finality. A painting photographed and circulated around 1910 could still return to the studio and become material for a new work.

It also changes how originality is understood. The visible portrait is not less original because an older image supports it. Reuse becomes a form of invention. Continuity of face makes the transformation legible rather than diminishing it.

Above all, the double portrait directs attention back to painting. The theft and recovery are remarkable episodes, but Klimt had already made the canvas a record of disappearance and persistence long before it left the gallery.

A Work About Presence After Change

Portrait of a Lady survives through selective preservation. Klimt kept a face, pose and much of a field while remaking the social and painterly identity around them. The later image does not erase the earlier state completely; it makes it physically inaccessible yet historically recoverable.

The unknown sitter intensifies that structure. A name might have encouraged biography to govern interpretation. Without one, the material facts become more prominent: the same features, two fashions, a reused support, an altered tempo of paint.

Its twentieth- and twenty-first-century history repeats the tension at another scale. The canvas disappeared from public custody but remained an identified work. When it returned, authenticity depended on recognising continuity through an extraordinary change of circumstance.

The result is neither only a late portrait nor only a famous recovered object. It is a study in how art can remain itself while accumulating new states, meanings and risks.

Klimt's woman still turns aside. Around her, however, almost everything tells a story of revision: the clothes over earlier clothes, the title over another title, the recovered canvas in its restored museum setting. Her identity is unknown, but the painting's identity has become exceptionally deep.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Accessed August 2026.

1. Galleria d'Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi, “Il Ritratto di signora di Gustav Klimt,” current holder record for title, 1916–17 date, oil medium, dimensions, late style, 1925 purchase, 1931 gallery placement, Claudia Maga comparison, underlying circa-1910 portrait, theft and 2019 recovery. View source.
2. Belvedere / Google Arts & Culture, “Portrait of a Lady: How Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece Returned to the Ricci Oddi Gallery,” institutional account of the two states, 1997 disappearance, possibly misleading frame, 2019 discovery, authentication and 28 November 2020 return. View source.
3. Gustav Klimt Database, “The Final Years,” scholarly context for Klimt's late female portraits, vivid modern dress, open paint handling and anonymous portrait types. View source.
4. Galleria d'Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi, “Bentornata in Galleria,” dated institutional announcement of the Seoul loan, return to Piacenza and renewed public display from April 2026. View source.

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