 Adele's hair, face, "décolletage" and hands are painted in oil; they make up less than a twelfth of the work and, in Whitford's opinion, convey little about the sitter's character.For Whitford the effect of the gold background is to "remove Adele Bloch-Bauer from the earthly plane, transform the flesh and blood into an apparition from a dream of sensuality and self-indulgence"; he, and Thomson, consider the work to look more like a religious icon than a secular portrait.O'Connor writes that the painting "seem[s] to embody femininity", and thus likens it to the "Mona Lisa", while for Müller and Tatzkow, the gold gives the effect that Adele appears "melancholy and vulnerable, unapproachably aloof and yet rapt".