Crossroads Roundup: Klimt Portrait Missing for 100 Years Goes to Auction, Ancient Tsunamis, and Roman Wine

Our favorite stories on art, archaeology, folklore, and more from this past week.

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Detail of Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, Gustav Klimt ca. 1917. Via im Kinsky.

A long-lost Klimt portrait has been rediscovered and will be auctioned off by im Kinsky. Like many artworks of Fin-de-siècle Vienna, its provenance is… complicated…

The rediscovered artwork, Portrait of Fräulein Lieser (1917), is estimated to be worth over $54 million.

Readers, I’ll admit that whenever I see news like this, my heart drops. If you know me well, you know that I am a massive fan of Gustav Klimt’s art, and I’m also well aware of the horrible history of what happened to most of his paintings—and, many of his loyal patrons. Some background:

Gustav Klimt was the star of Vienna’s Secession Movement, an artistic movement helmed by a group of Austrian artists and architects who broke away from the Association of Austrian Artists. The Association promoted much more traditional art and architectural styles and was hostile to the art nouveau of painters like Gustav Klimt and architect Otto Wagner.