Gustav Klimt's canvases drip with actual gold and sell for hundreds of millions, but the man who painted them grew up in grinding poverty near Vienna, the second of seven children in a family that moved constantly to find cheaper rent. This episode traces how his father's trade as a gold engraver planted a seed that would surface decades later, and how the rule-following muralist who won the Gold Cross of Merit from Emperor Franz Joseph transformed into the rebel the establishment branded a pornographer.

The turning point was 1892, when his father and brother Ernst died within months of each other. Grief, not caution, drove his work darker and more sexual, culminating in the University of Vienna ceiling paintings that outraged critics and politicians. Klimt bought them back, vowed never to accept another public commission, and founded the V ...