Russian Billionaire Seeks to Pull Sotheby's Into Art-World Fight

Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev was hunting for masterpieces when a Swiss dealer emailed his team about a chance to see “a bomb of beauty and sensuality.” The Russian flew to Vienna by private jet and was whisked off to view a canvas depicting women floating in a gilded sea, Gustav Klimt’s “Water Serpents II.”

Soon after the September 2012 viewing, the Russian agreed to buy the work in a deal that earned the Swiss dealer, Yves Bouvier, a 2 percent commission. But according to Rybolovlev’s legal team, there was more to the Klimt sale than the billionaire was told at the time -- a revelation that now threatens to pull Sotheby’s, one of the world’s largest auction houses, into the art world’s biggest international scandal.