Prior to December 2019, the last known location of Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady” was Italy’s Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art. As the Times of Israel describes, the museum shut its doors to the public to have some work done, and by the time all was said and done, the painting had disappeared. No one seemed to have the faintest clue of where it ran off to or who might have stolen it. It turned out that the painting was right under their noses and inside a museum wall. 

While gardeners were removing ivy, they uncovered a ventilation space. Inside was the frameless painting, wrapped in a black bag. Just like the old saying goes, one man’s trash bag is another man’s treasured artwork, one that could be worth an estimated $60 to $100 million. An expert confirmed the portrait’s authenticity by examining it under ultraviolet and infrared light, revealing a second face under the surface which had been discovered via X-ray analysis in 1996. Prosecutor Ornella Chicca captured the gravity of the rediscovery: “It is with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic.”