A masterpiece by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, the Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, was auctioned for a staggering $236.4 million in New York on Tuesday, securing its place as the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. The intense 20-minute bidding war involved six participants, though the buyer’s identity remains undisclosed by Sotheby’s, the auction house overseeing the sale. Painted between 1914 and 1916, the portrait has a tumultuous history, having been looted by the Nazis during World War II and nearly destroyed in a fire. It was rescued in 1948 and returned to Erich Lederer, the brother of the subject and a friend of Klimt’s contemporary, Egon Schiele. The painting remained in the Lederer family until its sale in 1983. The artwork depicts Elisabeth Lederer, an heiress and daughter of one of Klimt’s patrons, adorned in a white robe against a backdrop of a blue tapestry adorned with Asian motifs. The Nazis, who annexed Austria in 1938, plundered the Lederer art collection but spared the family portraits. In 1985, Leonard A. Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, acquired the painting, displaying it in his Fifth Avenue residence. The sale far exceeded pre-auction estimates of $150 million, surpassing the previous record for a Klimt artwork, Lady with a Fan, which sold for $108.8 million in 2023. The event also featured other Klimt works from Lauder’s collection, including Flowering Meadow and Forest Slope at Unterach am Attersee, each fetching between $60 million and $80 million. The most expensive artwork ever auctioned remains Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450.3 million in 2017. In a curious twist, a fully functional gold toilet sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan was sold for $12.1 million just an hour after the Klimt sale, with the buyer identified as a prominent American brand.