Fort Bard presents a special and particularly noteworthy event as part of its winter exhibition season: a key event that will decorate the spaces of the Military Chapel.

The work is Portrait of a Lady, by Gustav Klimt (Vienna, 1862–1918), one of the most significant and famous artists of the Vienna Secession. The work belongs to the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery in Piacenza.

The canvas — dating to 1916 or 1917 — is one of three paintings by the great Viennese master present in Italy and the only one to have been purchased by a private collector, unlike Giuditta at the Ca’Pesaro in Venice or Three Ages of Women at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. The painting was purchased in 1925 by Giuseppe Ricci Oddi, a Piacenza noble, for his own collection. The painting initially hung in the billiard room at his home before reaching the gallery established by the collector himself, which opened to the public in 1931.  The history of the painting, marked by various adventures, is unveiled in an impressive installation that serves as the prelude to and frames the work, thanks to a project curated by Fort Bard, the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery and Skira.

The canvas belongs to Klimt’s last phase of activity, when the fineness of his painting decreases, abandoning itself to almost hasty brushstrokes that betray a more emotional approach open to expressionist atmospheres. The identity of the woman in the painting is unknown, but it is probably one of the many models who posed for the artist. The painting owes its fame to the incredible events it experienced. It was a Piacenza high school student, Claudia Maga, who guessed the very particular origin of the work in 1996, which was then confirmed through analysis of the canvas. Klimt painted it over an earlier portrait that was believed to have been lost. This depicted a young woman identical in face and pose to the current image, but with a different style and dress.