culture
In November 2025, a Gustav Klimt portrait sold at auction for an amount that made it the most expensive work of modern art ever sold.
Klimt's 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer' sold for about $236 million at Sotheby's in November 2025, making it the most expensive work of modern art ever auctioned. Klimt's portraits from this period are prized for their ornate, gold-leaf-laden style and rarity, since relatively few of his major works remain in private hands, and this particular sitter came from a prominent Viennese family that was among Klimt's most important patrons.
$108 million dramatically understates the actual sale price, while $450 million overstates it, that far larger figure belongs to a different painting entirely.
The all-time record for any artwork at auction remains Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi,' which sold for roughly $450 million in 2017, a price so far above typical art sales that it remains an outlier even among the world's most valuable paintings.
culture
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