Italy: Rome hosts Klimt exhibition at Piazza Navona

Rome: Paintings by Gustav Klimt go on display in an exhibition at Palazzo Braschi, the Rome museum overlooking Piazza Navona, from 27 October until 27 March.

The works on show feature some of the Austrian artist’s masterpieces on loan from the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, the Klimt Foundation and public and private collections such as the Neue Galerie Graz.

Titled Klimt. La Secessione e l’Italia, the exhibition will include Portrait of a Lady, which went missing for almost 23 years after its theft from a gallery in the north Italian city of Piacenza.

The painting was stolen in 1997 before being rediscovered in the gallery’s garden, in mysterious circumstances, in 2019.

Other highlights among the paintings, sculptures and drawings on display will include Judith I, Lady in White, Friends I (The Sisters), Amalie Zuckerkandl, and The Bride.

The five-month exhibition will focus, among other themes, on the artist’s relationship with Italy and the influence he had on other artists working in the country.

There are only a handful of Klimts in Italy, including one on permanent display in Rome – The Three Ages of Woman – at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (GNAM).

The painting was shown at an international art exhibition in Rome in 1911, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy. It won a gold medal and was purchased by the Italian government to add to the GNAM collection.