Klimpt's Mona Lisa

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Makeup magnate and fine art enthusiast Ronald Lauder has paid 135 million dollars, the highest known price ever paid for a painting, for a 1907 Gustav Klimt portrait.

The portait, "Adele Bloch-Bauer 1", a gold-encrusted image of the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist, is considered a masterpiece of the Austrian Art Nouveau painter.

"This is our Mona Lisa," The New York Times quoted Lauder as saying Monday. "It is a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition."