Ver-Klimt

Yikes!:

A 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased by cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest amount ever paid for a painting, The New York Times reported.

The price tops the $104.1 million paid for Picasso's 1905 "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)" in an auction at Sotheby's in 2004, the paper said in its Monday edition.

The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist, is considered one of Klimt's masterpieces.

The Mandarin has a set of drink coasters with Klimt's most famous paintings (bought at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna a few years ago), and he is going to be extra careful with this one from now on.


Original photo caption: The 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt. The portrait has been purchased for $135 million, the highest amount ever paid for a painting, The New York Times reported. (Handout/Reuters)