In postwar Vienna her image became a symbol of Austrian culture – Adele Bloch-Bauer I was long called ‘the Austrian Mona Lisa’. The painting later became an icon of justice – the 2015 film Woman in Gold is the Hollywood version of the tale of the painting’s confiscation from the Jewish Bloch-Bauer family during World War Two and the long but ultimately successful struggle for restitution by Bloch-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann. Over the past century, many viewers have asked: who was Adele Bloch-Bauer?

‘Symphony in gold’

Bloch-Bauer was born Adele Bauer in Vienna in 1881. The daughter of a bank and railway director, she led a privileged, cultured childhood; at 19, she married Ferdinand Bloch, a sugar magnate 17 years her senior. Ferdinand adored the young woman, enough to make her last name part of his own. (Both became Bloch-Bauers; their siblings married each other, too, making for two couples with the same hyphenated last name.) The family were avid art patrons, not only collecting but also commissioning paintings – and the maverick, kaftan-clad Gustav Klimt was one of their favorite artists.