Klimt in the Wall: An Account of Return

By Alexa Sussmane.

Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery, a gallery in a small city of Passerini, Italy, made international news in December 2019 after the unexpected return of a Gustav Klimt painting which had been stolen from the same gallery twenty-three years earlier. Gardeners discovered Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady” (1916-17) (the “Portrait” or the “Painting”) in an exterior wall of the gallery after noticing a metal panel in a crevice of the gallery’s garden wall.^[1] It was reported that the painting was found undamaged and wrapped inside a bag within the wall.^[2] The portrait has since by authenticated by experts.^[3]

Shortly after this surprising discovery, two men admitted stealing and returning the Portrait in a letter to a local journalist.^[4] The two men may be linked to dozens of other thefts in the area, including the theft of three hundred illuminated manuscripts from the Passerini-Landi Library in 1984.^[5] The confessed thieves claimed to have returned the Painting “as a gift to the city”^[6] four years before it was found. It is unclear what happened to the Portrait in the intervening years.^[7]

The Ricci Oddi Gallery is a private museum, opened to the public in 1931 and founded upon the collection of Giuseppe Ricci Oddi.^[8] The Klimt Painting has remained in the possession of the gallery since its return and is once again on display.^[9] When asked if the gallery had received a payout from their insurance company at the time of the theft, the vice president of the Ricci Oddi Gallery, Laura Bonfanti, told The Art Newspaper: “I don’t know at this point. We’d need to check the documents from 22 years ago.”^[10] As of today, this has not been disclosed. This story raises a series of questions, such as why was this Painting important, how was the theft orchestrated and why was the Painting returned.