The woman painted here by Gustav Klimt, Amalie Zuckandl, died in a Nazi concentration camp. The portrait hangs in the elegant Belvedere Museum, which previously was a royal palace owned by the Hapsburgs.
The unfinished portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl demonstrates Gustav Klimt's method of working with the face as his starting point. Body and clothes are only indicated using sketchy strokes. The sitter was murdered as a Jew by the Nazis at Belzec extermination camp in 1942. In the 1920s, Zuckerkandl sold her portrait to Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. He had the painting returned to Amalie's daughter Hermine in 1940/41, who sold it to the art dealer Vita Künstler in 1942. Künstler bequeathed the portrait to the Belvedere in 1988. Restitution claims from the heirs of the Bloch-Bauer and Zuckerkandl families were concluded in 2008 with a decision by the Austrian Supreme Court against restitution.
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