The idea of applying gold and silver leaf  directly to his canvases probably came early to Klimt. He was born at Baumgarten, near Vienna, in 1862 - his father was an engraver in precious metals. Still, Klimt would have hardly imagined that one of his paintings would sell for thousands, perhaps millions, of times the value of precious metals he has put in it, and would create the new world record for the most expansive work of art. Yet, this is what happened in June 2006, 99 years after he painted the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the so called Golden Adele. The painting was sold in New York in a private deal, apparently for US$ 135 million. This beats the previous record, Picasso's "Boy with a pipe", by a whopping 30 million dollars!

The painting was bought by the millionaire Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie at Manhattan, which specializes in the works of classics of Austrian and German painting. The painting, which was confiscated by the Nazis in 1940, was returned to Marie Altmann, the 90 year old niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, after a long lasting dispute with the Austrian Government. It is one of the iconic works of the Viennese Secession. Adele, whose family would certainly have approved on the sweet deal, having made millions on refining and sales of the Bohemian sugar, poses in the picture as a femme fatale, virtually surrounded by gold.

Klimt first made himself known in his early twenties by the decorations he executed with his brother and their art school companion F. Matsch for the Viennesse theatres. In his early thirties, after the deaths of both his father and his brother, he opened an own painting studio and turned to easel painting, becoming fashionable as a portrait painter, particularly among the upper class ladies of Vienna. He also gained reputation as a landscape artist. Klimt was one of the founders of the Vienna Secession in 1897, but he withdrew from the movement eight years later, together with several other artists, to form a new association named Kunstschau or Art Show. At the same time, Klimt was never far from the controversy. His work was condemned by many of the contemporary critics as being too sensual and erotic, and the allegories in his pictures were being held as abnormal and deviant, particularly as he became more and more experimental with his work.

Gustav Klimt died in Vienna on February 6, 1918. Many of his paintings were left unfinished in the studio, some of which were of nude models, and the indications are that the subjects of his portrait paintings probably posed naked, before they were amply clad in the gold, the silver and the Art Noveau decorations. One cannot help wondering: Would the amounts of precious metals that went into the paintings be in direct proportion to the means of the Viennese ladies posing for the portraits? Or of their husbands? Could you sense a nice theme for a suspense novel? Possibly, but what about the copyrights? Roald Dahl already wrote a story, most likely inspired by the Klimt capers.