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A coating that helped prevention the beingness of its Jewish taxable during the Holocaust has go the astir costly portion of modern creation and the 2nd astir costly coating ever sold astatine auction.
The Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, by Austrian creator Gustav Klimt, was bought for $236.4m (£180m) by an unnamed purchaser aft a 20-minute bidding warfare astatine Sotheby's successful New York connected Tuesday.
Its merchantability terms bushed the erstwhile grounds for 20th-century creation acceptable by Andy Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, a representation of Marilyn Monroe bought for $195m (£148m) successful 2022.
The astir costly coating ever sold astatine auction was Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which fetched $450m (£342m) successful 2017, Christie's said connected its website.
The auction location said connected X the terms was "astonishing", making the portion "the astir invaluable enactment of modern creation ever sold astatine auction".
The portrait, which Klimt worked connected betwixt 1914 and 1916, depicts the girl of 1 of Vienna's wealthiest families wearing an East Asian emperor's cloak.
Evaded occurrence and Nazi looters
Measuring 1.8m (6ft), the colourful piece, which was completed successful 1916, illustrates the Lederer family's beingness of luxury earlier Nazi Germany annexed Austria successful 1938.
It was kept abstracted from different Klimt paintings that burned successful a occurrence astatine an Austrian castle.
It besides escaped being looted by the Nazis, who plundered the Lederer creation collection.
They near lone the household portraits, which they held to beryllium "too Jewish" to beryllium worthy stealing, according to the National Gallery of Canada, wherever the coating was antecedently connected loan.
Father prevarication saved her life
To prevention her ain life, Elisabeth Lederer made up a communicative that Klimt, who was not Jewish and died successful 1918, was her father.
It helped that the creator spent years moving meticulously connected her portrait.
She convinced the Nazis to springiness her a papers stating that she descended from Klimt, which allowed her to unrecorded safely successful Vienna until her decease from unwellness successful 1944.
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The painting, which is 1 of 2 full-length portraits by the Austrian creator that stay privately owned, was portion of the postulation of billionaire Leonard A Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, who died this year.
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Five Klimt pieces from Lauder's postulation sold astatine the auction for a full of $392m (£298m), which besides included pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch, Sotheby's said.
An 18-carat-gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan - the provocative Italian creator known for taping a banana to a partition - sold for a reported $12.1m (£9.2m).
The fully-functioning toilet, 1 of 2 helium created successful 2016 satirising superwealth, was stolen portion connected show astatine Blenheim Palace, the state manor wherever Winston Churchill was born, successful 2019.
Two men were convicted of the theft, but it's unclear what they did with the loo.
Investigators judge it was apt breached up and melted down.
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