The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page A

a painting of Franz Schubert playing piano by candlelight.A wealthy Klimt patron,Serena Lederer, lent Mizzi a whispery silk gown to model for the painting, and Mizzi eagerly shed her unfashionable street clothes.
    Mizzi felt honored to be taken seriously by a great man.Klimt asked her to model nude for the
Naked Truth
of the Secession. Mizzi introduced Klimt to her mother, raising expectations.Klimt wangled Mizzi a role on a holiday parade float representing Vienna, and her family cheered with the crowd.

    Teenager Mizzi Zimmermann, at left,
1899
. She became pregnant with Klimt’s son while she modeled for his painting of Schubert playing the piano. ( Illustration Credit 7.2 )
    Klimt unveiled his painting of Schubert, playing one of his sensual piano compositions. But he didn’t invite Mizzi to the Dumba Palace on the Ringstrasse to join the guests admiring his rendering of her as a delicately lit, mysterious beauty by the piano, her hair a russet halo. The critic Hermann Bahr called it “the most beautiful painting that was ever painted by an Austrian,” saying that “this tranquility, this placidness, this radiance on the civic modesty—this is our Austrian character.”
    But Mizzi was desperate. Mizzi was pregnant. “Is it possible that your dear good mother doesn’t have a clue?” Klimt wrote, when he returned from his steamy encounter with Alma.
    I’m falling apart from within, in a chaos of contradictions. How destiny has tortured me, hunted me. I feel more guilty than you can ever imagine. How was I ever happy? How was I looking forward to Italy? How much did I hope, full of longing, to be relieved of this sadness? But it was not meant to be. Everything beautiful was destroyed by torturous thoughts! My heart wanted to burst from pain.
    From the time you came, I felt you were a kind of Fate. I felt it would be better if you didn’t come, but I couldn’t do without you. But at the same time, the beast within the man was aroused. I held it down, and we resisted for a time. I had a holy reverence for the Virgin. You were saved. Then you came again, you came again, transformed! And the disastrous mischief began.
    How deeply it cut into my heart when I was asked, at the unveiling of my last painting, this painting of misfortune, so many times: “Who is She?” Always “She,” the very image of you. I should have told them, “That is a blessed and beautiful child, that I have brought misfortune and misery.” And if I rake my feverish mind, from the depths of my idiotic skull, I can’t change what has happened.
    Dear Mizzi, maybe you can find the courage to tell [your mother] everything. Is it really so unnatural, so incomprehensible, Mizzi? Is it the most disgusting thing that can happen to two human beings? Must I wander the earth a haunted man? Bring me a bit of comfort by telling me that you forgive me. I need strength. It is imperative. I am bound to do major state commissions until the Paris World Exhibition. I have to sustain my poor and defenseless sisters.
    You shall be cared for as if you were my wife. I want to shelter you from sorrow, and look after your future, as a small penitence, for the misery I have brought upon us. For that, however, I need the strength to awaken from this despair.
    You are going to bring it to me when you say that you don’t blame me, and your dear mother does not condemn me. I ask you for this comfort. With it, I will return to work, with redoubled strength. Will there be a reprieve? Your deeply unhappy friend, Gustav Klimt
    He didn’t tell Mizzi he was expecting another child in two months, with a poor Czech washerwoman namedMaria Ucicka.
    The odds were against Mizzi from the start. Klimt was deeply attached to his unmarried sister-in-law,Emilie Flöge, and her family. He would never give up this relationship, or the summer idylls at mountain lakes with the warm, close-knit family that his late brother