Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Gold and silver leaf catch the light across this glittering portrait, the crowning achievement of Gustav Klimt's "Golden Phase" from 1907. The woman gazing out is Adele Bloch-Bauer, wife of a rich Viennese sugar magnate who commissioned the work. Klimt labored over it for three years, and the results show. Her figure seems to dissolve into a river of swirling patterns, spirals, and small symbols, while her face, hands, and shoulders stay soft and lifelike. The mix feels like a portrait fused with a mosaic, drawing on Byzantine gold art and the daring lines of Vienna's Art Nouveau scene.

Behind the beauty sits a tale of loss and justice. When the Nazis took the painting from the Bloch-Bauer family during World War II, it ended up in an Austrian museum under a false name meant to erase its Jewish roots. Adele's niece, Maria Altmann, spent years in court to win it back, finally succeeding in 2006. Later that year the portrait sold for roughly 135 million dollars, among the priciest paintings of its day. It now lives at the Neue Galerie in New York, still pulling visitors into its shimmering maze of detail.