The Battle Over Nazi-Stolen Art
On the eve of the release of a film starring Ryan Reynolds as a lawyer and Helen Mirren as the Jewish refugee who won a historic battle with the Austrian government over the ownership of a great painting, an expert at Christie’s has spoken of a force that is changing the shape of the international art market: the new understanding of the huge scale of wartime art thefts. In “Woman in Gold,” Mirren plays the part of US citizen Maria Altmann, niece of the muse of Viennese painter Gustav Klimt. Her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, had been the striking model for the artist’s celebrated 1907 painting, “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” (pictured).
