When backgrounds come to the fore

Art has long been obsessed with faces. Mona Lisa's smile, Klimt's gilded women, Rembrandt's self-portraits - all foregrounds that seduce the eye. Yet, the genius of a masterpiece often lurks behind the subject. Take Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer', which on Tuesday became the second-most-expensive artwork ever sold at an auction ($236.4 mn). The sitter, elegant and aloof, is enveloped in a shimmering imperial Chinese dragon robe. But it's the background that elevates Lederer from bourgeois daughter to timeless icon. Without the gnomic Chinese figures behind her, she would be just another Golden Age Viennese beauty. Da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' offers the opposite strategy. Behind her enigmatic smile lies a dreamlike landscape of winding rivers, jagged mountains and misty horizons. The background is almost ghostly. But it destabilises the portrait. It suggests that Lisa del Giocondo is not merely a Florentine woman, but a figure suspended between human intimacy and nature's mystery. Other masters understood this interplay. Vermeer's domestic interiors, with their maps and windows, turn quiet women into emblems of global curiosity. Turner's storm-tossed seas swallow his ships.

In life, too, foregrounds - titles, salaries, selfies - are easy to admire. But it's the background - context, experience, environment - that makes us resonate.