"The 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) portrait, painted over three years between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of one of Vienna's wealthiest families adorned in an East Asian emperor's cloak. It is one of two full-length portraits by the Austrian artist that remain privately owned. The work was kept separate from other Klimt paintings that burned in a fire at an Austrian castle."
"In an attempt to save herself, Elisabeth Lederer made up a story that Klimt, who was not Jewish and died in 1918, was her father. It helped that the artist spent years working meticulously on her portrait. With help from her former brother-in-law, a high-ranking Nazi official, she convinced the Nazis to give her a document stating that she descended from Klimt. That allowed her to remain safely in Vienna until she died of an illness in 1944."
Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby's in New York after a 20-minute bidding war, establishing a modern art record. The six-foot portrait, painted 1914–1916, portrays Elisabeth Lederer in an East Asian emperor's cloak and survived while other Klimt works burned. Nazis looted the Lederer collection in 1938 but left family portraits deemed "too Jewish" to steal. Elisabeth claimed Klimt as her father and, with aid from a former brother-in-law who was a high-ranking Nazi, obtained a document proving descent, allowing her to remain in Vienna until her 1944 death. The painting came from Leonard A. Lauder's collection.
Read at Fast Company
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